


One in the Eye, One in the Heart

by Meilan_Firaga



Series: The Eye & Heart Universe [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, DeathSmoak, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First chapter written in response to a prompt by lluvia185 on tumblr. Slade's always been out for an eye for an eye, but Felicity is a fan of alternative solutions. Speechlessness is not something Slade has much experience with. Now multiple chapters because my brain won't let it go. Felicity Smoak / Slade Wilson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Eye for An Eye

**Author's Note:**

> This ship popped out of nowhere and now my brain won't let it go. The title could be far more creative, but my brain was less worried about that than the accompanying plot bunny. I haven't hammered a fic out as quickly as I did this one in a very long time.
> 
> I, sadly, have no legal rights to Arrow or the characters. Blah blah fanfiction is free blah blah fanfiction is for fun blah blah people should get over it blah. Incoming lawsuits will be laughed out of court.

**Part One: An Eye for An Eye**

"You know, I told Oliver a long time ago that murder isn't the only way to handle things."

 She shouldn't be in his office. He shouldn't be in his office. He'd left the Russian in his desk chair with a very telling bolt in his head. Yet, there he is, sitting in that same desk chair with his back to the door. Turning the chair around with one foot finds him face to face with Oliver Queen's bespectacled "assistant."

 "I mean, murder is great and all if you're okay with having that much blood on your hands, which you obviously are, and I definitely felt the urge the make a few customers stop breathing back in my call center days, but when it comes down to accomplishing a goal there are totally better ways to go about it than murder." Felicity Smoak sauntered forward as she rambled, coming to a halt only once she had perched herself atop the desk across from him. Her flowing skirt and pink cardigan were entirely too sweet, too innocent for the thoughts that ravaged his mind with the sway of her hips. "I'm talking too much, aren't I?"

  _No_ , his mind insisted. "What are you doing here?" his mouth demanded instead. His voice was gruff, but not nearly so dangerous as he'd intended it to sound.

 The blonde heaved a heavy, dramatic sigh, a tendril of hair escaping from her ponytail as she examined her pastel yellow fingernails. "What is it with you tortured soul island dwelling males that means you have to have the simplest things explained to you?" She spun to face him on the desktop--strangely devoid of lamps and other trinkets she could have knocked to the floor--tucking entirely too tempting legs beneath her skirt as she moved. "Clearly, I'm here because no one has had the 'murder isn't always a necessity' talk with you. Bad people do bad things. People are human and make mistakes. If all you keep doing is killing them for it, the only thing you'll end up being is alone."

 Slade's eyebrows furrowed. Either she wasn't making sense or he was still not following. However, before he could comment she babbled on.

 "I mean, I know people say that 'revenge is a dish best served cold' and all of that, but five years later is kind of pushing it into 'revenge is a dish being dragged from the back of the freezer' territory. You know what I think?" She paused, almost like she was actually going to wait for him to put in a comment of his own, but the radiant smile that crossed her face stunned him to silence. "I think that revenge goes best when it can be picked up whenever. Like all the dishes at one of those great buffet restaurants where you can get as many plates and go back as many times as you want."

 There was a sharp tug on his hair and before he realized what she'd done his own eyepatch was swinging from her fingers in front of his face. "It's only half about Shado, right?" she said, almost mockingly. "The rest is this. An eye for an eye." Anger welled up inside of him, his fists tightening on the edge of the desk, but she didn't pause long enough for his protest. "Oliver acted on instinct to save a woman he felt he'd already condemned to death out of his own selfishness. Another woman died as a result, and because he didn't tell you the truth you think he has to die for it. Never mind that grief or guilt or both was probably why he didn't tell you in the first place." She snorted, tossing the eyepatch over his shoulder. "Poor Slade. He lost a loved one, got another scar added to the many he's collected, and got his feelings hurt by his little brother."

 His heart felt as though it was going to hammer out of his chest. His breath was short and shallow. Blurring shapes creeped along the edges of his vision until all he could see was her face. The eyes behind her thick glasses never left his own. A pair of soft pink lips refused to stop spitting out the very thoughts that plagued him in his weakest moments.

 "I mean, I get how seriously it must have hurt. I've been on the receiving end of Oliver's 'my angst is too much for you so I have to bottle it up inside and never cop to it until you catch me' actions myself. Which is one of the reasons why I'm pretty much in a constant state of annoyance with him." Her intense gaze finally broke from his, her head tilting to the side. "Well, that and his inability to keep the focus on only one woman. Do you have any idea how many loves of his life Oliver has had since he first came back from the island?" Eyes finding his again, she smacked herself in the forehead. "Of course you do. The stalking goes with that whole vengeance thing. I got off track.

 Suddenly Slade realized that she was much closer. She'd slid across the entire surface of his desk, her feet now swinging on either side of his knees. He swallowed a lump in his throat as the brush of her skirt against his slacks sent a shiver down his spine. Finally finding his voice again, he pushed back on his chair and stood, determined to ignore that this brought him to stand between her thighs. "Why are you here, Miss Smoak?" he growled, staring down at her.

 "Well, I'm your eye." Felicity shook her head, looking as though she might be a hair's breadth from smacking herself again. "Not, you know, in the literal sense seeing as how you've only got one of those and I definitely wasn't born from the one Oliver shot since I'm way older than five and that is not how this was supposed to go." With another shake of her head she took a deep breath, locked her hands around the lapels of his jacket, gathered her feet beneath her once more, and rose on her knees until she was level with his face. Her hands slid over his shoulders, not holding him, but dangling over his back as though they might at any moment. "When someone you love dies, the best thing you can do is live. Live for them and all the things they'll never do. Live for you and all the things you could have done with them. The best revenge is even to leave a better, happier life than the person you're looking to get back at."

 All at one her arms attached themselves to his back, the full length of her tiny torso pressed against his broad chest. Of their own volition his hands went to her back, one sliding across her waist while the other traveled between her shoulder blades. Her hair smelled of apples. His eye slid closed and Slade Wilson, for the first time since Shado's death, allowed himself to feel like someone could care. When Felicity spoke again, her voice brushed across his earlobe. "You lost an eye. I'm the eye you could get in return. There's always another way." A quiet snort escaped from her mouth, warm air rushing over his throat. "You know, if you stop being an ass and trying to kill my friends. You're good at it, but I bet I could find a better use of your time."

 Slade shot up in bed, coming awake all at one. His eye darted wildly around the dim room he rented in Starling City. He was alone. Sweat crawled along his body despite the chill in the air. A dream. Nothing more. And yet... he sniffed the air. He stood and prowled the room. No one had come in or gone out. He was sure of it.

 The scent of apples still lingered.


	2. Just Call Me Jiminy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wasn't planning for this to be more than a one shot, but a handful of comments between here and FF.net apparently shoved my brain in gear. I have no idea how long this will end up being, but I do like where it's going. :) Enjoy!

** Part Two: Just Call Me Jiminy **

Taking Thea Queen was logical. The most important person to Oliver who didn't know his secret? It was obvious. The fact that no one seemed to expect it was, frankly, insulting. The Huntress had provided the perfect distraction, and they'd actually let the youngest Queen wander off on her own. In the Glades. At night. He would have to remember to send Miss Bertinelli a lovely little prison gift. Perhaps in the form of a jailbreak, even. Offer the young girl a ride, listen as she rants about her boyfriend, offer her a handkerchief when the tears start. Dosing a handkerchief was a stroke of brilliance, if he did say so himself.

"God, you're a jerk. I mean, I'm a nice Jewish girl who occasionally sneaks bacon which is kind of jerk-like, but you are behaving like a serious jerk."

Make logical choices and life will give you a perfectly illogical response meant to drive you mad.

"The girl is nineteen. She's not much younger than Shado was. Actually, I'm not sure I want to think about that. That almost makes you kind of creepy in this whole 'kill people for the woman I loved' quest you've set yourself out on."

Slade was not going to look. If he looked, things were going to fall apart. Things needed to stay pieced together--at least while he still had a kidnapped Thea Queen unconscious in the passenger seat of his car. Speaking of, a sports car of this caliber certainly did not have a spacious backseat. Any backseat passengers would have to be horribly cramped.

"Your son isn't a teenager, is he? Because, you know, that would add a whole new level of creep to this whole thing." Her voice was perky to an almost musical degree. Keeping his eyes glued to the road, Slade reached one hand to his opposite arm and pinched hard. "You know, everyone always says 'pinch me, I'm dreaming' like it's actually going to help, but have you noticed that you never think to pinch yourself when you really are dreaming? It's like one of those weird urban myths that no one knows how it got started."

"You're not real," Slade growled, determinedly not looking in his rear view mirror. "If I'm awake, you're a hallucination."

"Yes, because hallucinating me is so much better." She snorted and in the time it took him to blink the sensation of her breath across his throat in the dream came rushing back. "I could actually be here, you know. You're not exactly subtle with the big shiny sports car thing going on. I might have just slipped into the back while you weren't looking."

He couldn't take it. He looked. Felicity Smoak's face gave him a pointed look in his rear view mirror, one eyebrow quirked over the frame of her glasses. Momentarily surprised, he whipped his head around. The backseat was empty. Slade slammed on the brakes with barely enough time to stop at the next red light, one hand lashing out to prevent Thea from slamming into the dash. When he looked back up in the mirror her face was there again with a quirky half smile.

"Okay, so I lied. I am a hallucination. Hallucinating really can't be good for your health. When it happens without drugs it's supposed to mean that your brain is trying to tell you something that you're refusing to acknowledge. Of course I suppose since you're chock full of Mirakuru it could technically be drugs but given that you've had it in your system for years I'm going to go with the idea that something in your subconscious is talking to you." She paused, and Slade glanced up to watch her eyes go wide and an excited expression overtake her features. "Ooh! Maybe it's like one of those old fortune telling machines in the seedy pizza joints. Slade! Zoltar's talking to you!"

He ground his teeth, reminding himself tightly that he was in the process of kidnapping his arch nemesis' younger sister. "Why are you here, Miss Smoak?" Her comparison of his subconscious to a game meant to wrench quarters from the naive was _not_ adorable. Not in the least.

"I came to ask you to go see the new Kevin Costner movie with me this Friday. There will be explosions and guns and killing people. You'll love it. Seriously, why the hell do you think I'm here? You're kidnapping an innocent young girl after I specifically told you that there are better ways to go about this whole vengeance thing."

"You never told me anything," Slade insisted, taking a hard right turn that caused his victim to jostle about in her sleep. He leaned over, one hand still on the wheel, and strapped Thea's seatbelt over her body, the latch clicking into place. "You were nothing more than a dream."

Pressure crossed his shoulders, and a glance in the rear view mirror showed the young blonde leaning up to wrap her arms around him, her face inches from his own. "Yes, because nothing more than a dream haunts you for days and starts showing up when you're awake." She sighed, a heavy one of exasperation. "Part of you knows that you don't want to do this, Slade. I told you before that there are other ways. Do you really think I'd be here if you were still completely hell bent on seeing this through?" In the mirror image Felicity closed her eyes, and he could swear that he felt the brush of her hair against his collar. The scent of apples was nearly overwhelming. "The stuff you dosed that poor girl with has a nice little forgetful property. When she wakes up she could easily be convinced that she just fell asleep on the drive."

A ghost of lips pressed against his cheek just beneath the eyepatch. "It's all about alternatives. You have them. Until you make up your mind, just call me Jiminy Cricket." All of a sudden the pressure was lifted. When Slade looked into the mirror again, she was gone. He drove on through the streets of Starling City, mind busy. A dream was one thing, but he could actually smell apple shampoo on the shoulder of his suit, and he certainly hadn't been asleep for this. Maybe he really was going crazy. He rolled the car to a halt, careful to put it in park and pull the emergency break before he cut the engine. Standing from the driver's seat, he made his way around, unlatched Thea's seatbelt, and lifted the young girl effortlessly into his arms. She barely stirred, only turning further into his shoulder.

The front door opened suddenly and Moira Queen came rushing out, the look on her face frantic as she called her daughter's name. Slade turned toward her, walking slowly and raising one hand beneath Thea's knee. "She's alright, Mrs. Queen," he assured her. "I offered her a ride, and I think she may have been a bit knackered." He looked down at Thea, suddenly struck with how small she was. She wasn't small like Shado had been. She was delicate, like a young woman whose hardships and been much less physical.

Like Felicity.

Moira was talking at him, babbling the eloquent thanks of a mother who'd practiced too often what to say to cops for bringing her errant children home from something they shouldn't have been doing. He shook his head to wave her off, continuing toward the door at a slower pace so she could keep up. "It was no trouble. I don't like the thought of a young woman walking alone at night in certain parts of this town." Well, he'd been counting on it, but she didn't need to know that. Moira led him into the house and up the Thea's room while he controlled his pace and pretended not to know the way. He settled the girl in her bed, politely declined the offer of a nightcap, and was back in his car as quickly as possible.

Someone would tell Oliver Queen that he'd had the perfect opportunity to take Thea. It wouldn't take more than a day before he knew that his little sister trusted Slade enough to get in a car with him in the dead of night. That would certainly put the kid on edge. That could be enough for now. There were no faces in the rear view mirror as he drove back to his rented rooms, but a brief electrical short switched his radio on. The song was soft and sweet, a tale of things willingly given up for love.

Without warning, a vision of blonde curls danced across his mind, and--quite unexpectly--Slade Wilson smiled.


	3. Team Stompy-Hate-Revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slade gives in to the nagging of his personal hallucination with unexpected results.

**Part Three - Team Stompy-Hate-Revenge**

 

It could quite easily be classified as the most idiotic thing he'd ever done, but Friday night found Slade Wilson at a tiny cinema in the Glades. He mentally kicked himself even as he bought a ticket for the only action movie they were showing, then spent his moments in the refreshment line silently cursing the recent insanity of his brain. Not only had it been a hallucinated Felicity Smoak who asked him here, but the hallucination had even meant it sarcastically. Yet, there he stood, being bullied into purchasing an overpriced box of chocolate candy along with his overpriced cola. Since when did a dangerous mercenary like himself give in to the sales rhetoric of a bored teenager?

 His one comfort lay in the fact that this was easily the least active theater in Starling City. Its online reviews were terrible, and he was honestly amazed that it was even in business. Despite the prime date night hour, there was barely a soul in the place. Actually, the few patrons in the less than appealing lobby looked to be there on some sort of suspicious business rather than to watch a movie. Needless to say, he was not likely to encounter anyone that might think he was ready for a fight on this night.

 The hallway to theater three was short, and he was inside the door waiting for his eye to adjust to the dim lighting in no time. One good thing about losing an eye was that the light adjustment actually took less time. When he could see again, his gaze immediately latched onto to something that hit him like a punch in the gut.

 Three rows from where he stood, dead center, and the only other person in the theater. Blonde curls trailing from a ponytail that he wouldn't have recognized before she started showing up in his brain. Slade closed his eyes and counted to ten. Willed the hallucination away. Opened them again.

 Felicity was still there.

 Something was different this time. She should be berating him. Rambling at him. Anything. Instead, she appeared to be completely oblivious to his presence, simultaneously playing some sort of game on her phone and munching from a large bucket of popcorn. He approached cautiously, expecting her to either disappear or start babbling at any moment. When he stood barely a foot away he smirked down at her.

 "Never was much for popcorn," he mused.

 It was only due to his Mirakuru enhanced reflexes that he caught her popcorn tub before it hit the floor. Her phone was less lucky. It smacked into the carpet and disappeared beneath the row in front of them. Felicity stared up at him in wide-eyed horror, and Slade realized in one very uncomfortable moment that he had somehow managed to encounter the real life Felicity Smoak rather than his personal mental vision of her. He cleared his throat, careful to move extra slowly as he bent forward and placed the bucket of popcorn back in her lap.

 "I assure you, Miss Smoak," he began, "that I am only here for the film. I have no desire to harm you or to end up in a confrontation with your employer." Even to his own ears the words didn't feel the least bit reassuring. Figuring that he probably couldn't make the situation much worse without murder or kidnapping, Slade eased himself down into the seat beside her and sipped his soda, determinedly focusing his eye on the boring pre-film reels that were currently showing. Slowly, Felicity came back to herself, bending forward to retrieve her phone. He was sure that this would be the moment when she would alert her friends. The fight was probably going to end up destroying the entire theater. To his surprise, she slipped the phone into the purse hanging from her armrest, slumping back into her seat, and clutching the bucket of popcorn to her chest.

 "Of all the crappy theaters," she grumbled, almost low enough to keep him from hearing, "in all the vigilante-protected cities, in all the world the raving psycho with a grudge walks into mine." She had a petulant tone that Slade was trying very hard not to think of as cute. "Even picked the same damn movie and of course there's no one else here because I have the worst luck in the world and even if I made a call no one would make it here before he killed me and I had really hoped that I was going to die in a much cooler manner than in a movie theater..."

 Finally, he couldn't take it anymore, and leaned just enough toward her that he could respond in a low whisper. "There are thousands of people in this city. You are the one that I least want to die." Through his very limited peripheral he watched as she turned her head and openly gaped at him.

 "That doesn't make any sense!" she exclaimed, loudly, after several long moments. "I am so Team Oliver that Twilight fans are getting angry I stole the whole team thing and you are definitely on the opposing Team Stompy-Hate-Revenge. I cannot possibly be the one you'd choose to not have die."

 Slade leaned down toward her again as the house lights dimmed. "Hush now," he whispered, giving her an exaggerated smirk. "The previews are starting. And with all due respect, Miss Smoak, the only things you know about me are those that you've either dug up on your computer or that you've been told by Oliver or Sara." She was silent through the entire first preview, though she'd gone from staring at him to frowning into her popcorn, lips pursed in thought. Midway through the second preview she seemed to come to some sort of conclusion, and the next words she spoke were whispered directly into his ear.

 "So, why this movie? I mean, not that you can't like whatever movies you want or go to whatever theaters you want, though I think the people who know about your murder-y side might think differently, but why did you pick where and what I was seeing?"

 Since she'd taken the liberty of getting closer to whisper, he did the same, brushing a few strands of her ponytail over her shoulder. "Honestly? I came here because it's the least popular cinema in Starling. I picked the film... well, let's just say that a little bird recommended it to me." He'd almost pulled back when he had an idea, and he very nearly knocked his forehead against hers in his haste to see it through. "I don't suppose you like chocolate?" he asked, lifting the box--still wrapped in plastic--that he'd purchased for her to see. "The harpy at the front hounded me into purchasing it, but I've never had much of a sweet tooth."

 Felicity stared at the box with a mixture of worry and temptation in her eyes. She bit her thumbnail briefly, considering, before her hand shot out past the box and clasped his chin. Stunned, he didn't even resist as she turned his face toward hers so she could look him directly in the eye. "Listen to me very carefully." Her whisper had an edge of danger that he wouldn't have thought her capable of. "There is a sacred trust in chocolate. You do not tamper with chocolate. You do not use chocolate to drug or poison unsuspecting IT specialists who are using their only Friday night off in six months to watch an action flick in a seedy theater. You do not offer chocolate unless it is an honest gesture of wanting to share the chocolately goodness with another human being." Abruptly, she released his face and sat back in her chair, eyes on the screen once more. "So long as you understand that, feel free to offer again."

 Grinning at both her naiveté and the fact that she would threaten him over candy, Slade leaned down to her ear once more, inhaling deeply. She really did smell like apples. "Would you care to take this chocolate, Miss Smoak?" he offered just as the opening credits of the film began to roll.

 She snatched it out of his hand so fast he briefly entertained the idea that Oliver had found a way to dose her with Mirakuru. "Thank you, Mr. Wilson. I do love chocolate."

 The didn't speak for the rest of the movie. At least, not much and not directly to one another. Felicity made several comments about unrealistic computer details. In one particular fight scene Slade groaned about how many openings the supposedly battle hardened characters left for an experienced fighter to get through and kill them. The entire thing was full of mediocre writing, pointless explosions, daring stunts, and thrilling special effects. The hallucination was right. He loved it. The highlight of the film, though, was watching Felicity's reactions. She clearly enjoyed this type of movie despite her day-to-day life. They both stood as the final credits rolled, and Slade was surprised when Felicity immediately launched into another babble fest.

 "Okay, so I normally always see the endings coming, but that nice little twist? Totally didn't expect that." She followed close on his heels as he made his way toward the lobby, a flood of critique falling from her mouth. "And wow was that villain hot. I mean, not that villains are hot given their not great natures, but if he'd been a good guy I could see myself jumping his bones and I really am not considering who I'm babbling at. Shutting up now."

 Shaking his head in amusement, Slade stopped her with a gentle hand on her elbow once they'd stepped outside the doors. "Miss Smoak, you may 'babble' at me about anything you wish." He tilted his head toward the bar across the street. "In fact, I was wondering if you might join me for a drink."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I completely invented a nameless action flick. >.> Don't hate me.
> 
> Also cliffhanger. Ish. Because reasons. :p


	4. Two Glasses Half Full

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah. I am SO SORRY for the long time between updates. This chapter was a bit of a beast for me because I knew how I wanted it to start and how I wanted it to end, but the middle simply wouldn't cooperate. I hope it lives up to expectations and I thank all of you amazing people for continuing to read!

**Part Four - Two Glasses Half Full**

 

Okay, so she might have made some seriously less than sane decisions in the past, but Felicity was pretty sure this one took the cake. Not only had she sat through an entire movie (and how weird was that, by the way?) with the psychopath bent on destroying Oliver Queen, but now she was sitting in a poorly lit bar in the Glades while that same psychopath bought her a drink. Granted, he hadn't exactly been behaving in a particularly psychotic manner, but given that he'd been making their lives a living hell for the last however long didn't exactly paint a first date picture that she should be enjoying.

 "That was not where that thought train should have gone," she muttered aloud.

 "I beg your pardon?"

 Felicity raised her head from the bar menu she'd been working very hard to look like she was studying and blinked owlishly at Slade. "Oh crap, did I say something out loud that was supposed to stay in my head?" His slightly raised eyebrow was all the answer she needed. "Sorry. I've kind of got a serious brain-to-mouth problem that I can't seem to get a lock on. Not that, you know, I'm actually apologizing to you. I don't care what you think of me because you keep trying to kill all of my friends. Well, I care that you think you don't want to kill me because not dying is a little high on my list of priorities but when it comes to my filter I really don't care if you know that I think this whole night is kinda creepy and you are way more attractive than you have any right to be with all of the evil--not that you're evil, just really content to murder, and not that evil people can't be attractive or that I think you're particularly attractive because I don't--not that you're unattractive either and I really should have just called Oliver or Diggle or ran my happy ass home or disappeared into a giant hole in the floor like I'm going to do right now."

 "And here I thought I'd hallucinated that endearing little tendency," Slade muttered, clearly speaking to himself, a strange half-smile on his lips. Felicity froze, dropping her drink menu to the table and not even bothering to hide that she was staring at him. Did he just say hallucinated? Was he have hallucinations about her? Why? And why did that suddenly capture her interest in ways that it definitely shouldn't? "You're still talking out loud, love."

 Thankfully, the bar's one waitress chose that moment to get their drink orders. Still wary, Felicity asked for a strawberry daiquiri, light on the rum. Slade ordered a glass of some expensive bourbon, then instructed the waitress to make sure she gave Felicity her drink first and kept it far from him. "Wouldn't want the lady to think I'm trying to slip her something," he quipped, and from the way the waitress laughed and petted his elbow like he couldn't be thought of to do such a thing he was managing to be quite charming.

 Oliver Queen was charming, too, but Felicity knew better than anyone that the charm could mask some super serious danger. Really, Oliver had kind of defined the characteristic of playing up the loveable womanizer image to hide his ability to kill you in seconds for her. If this megalomaniac thought he was going to pull the wool over her eyes with his coy smiles and far too sexy accent he had another thing coming.

 "What is it about my accent that American women find so appealing?"

 Felicity dropped her head to the table, thumping it twice. "I've really got to get a handle on my babble." She raised her head back up, lifting her arm to jab a finger in his general direction. "That is not a conversation we are going to have. You asked me for drinks and I don't think for an instant that you don't have some ulterior motive in doing so, so if we're going to talk about anything it is first going to be why you sat next to me through an entire movie, gave me chocolate, and then asked me out to a bar when you've been systematically attempting to destroy the lives of a lot of people I care about."

 To her shock--and it really was quite a shock--Slade actually looked a little sheepish. It completely transformed him. Gone was the false confidence he'd used on the waitress and absent was the hardness in his face that said he was a cold murderer. If she didn't know any better (and she was pretty sure she knew better, but with the way this night was going there wasn't any way to be positive), she would think he was any other guy on an attempt at a first date. Granted, he was a large mass of muscle missing an eye, but no matter their personality there was a look guys got and she'd seen it happen to other girls enough to recognize it.

 The waitress returned with their drinks, ensuring the both of their silence for a few moments longer. Slade toyed with his, taking a short sip and then studying the two neat ice cubes floating in the amber liquor. Finally, he set it back down, focusing his full attention on her. After dealing with Oliver for so long, Felicity was used to such intense stares, but something about his caused her toes to tingle.

 "I wasn't lying when I said that I hadn't planned to run into you," he admitted, "and there really was nothing more to the chocolate than my not wanting it. As for the drinks..." he trailed off into a non-committal shrug, suddenly finding his bourbon very interesting. "I wanted to hear you talk."

 Silent tension overtook the table. Slade was still gazing into his drink while Felicity's mind raced at speeds that were almost foreign to her. Wasn't that a nice surprise? Speechless was not something she spent a lot of time being, and here she was, speechless.

 "Flabbergasted," she blurted. Slade finally looked up at her, one eyebrow lifted in question. "That's the word. For what my brain is feeling. I mean, not flabbergasted because of you but flabbergasted because of what you said. No one wants to hear me talk. Or, at least, if they do want to hear me talk it takes all of five minutes before they're ready for me to shut up. This isn't how it works, and certainly not with somebody that, as I keep saying, keeps trying to kill my friends."

 Slade sighed, the sound full of resignation and something that Felicity actually thought might be _hurt_. That couldn't be right, though, because he just didn't seem the type to get hurt. Least of all by her.

 "Miss Smoak, I have no call to ask anything of you, so I rather expect that you're going to say no. However, I would like to ask you something." He gave her a questioning look, and before she knew it she was giving him a tiny nod, curiosity willing him to go on. "While I realize that we have a very serious elephant hovering in the form of my motivations regarding Oliver Queen, could you possibly find it within yourself to have the rest of this drink with me as though we are just two people who met at a theater and sought to continue a conversation? Possibly like a pair of normal adults without strange nighttime activities?"

 A very large part of her screamed that the suggestion was absolutely ludicrous. Actually, that was pretty much all of her, but there was that tiny bit of her brain that had seen a man nervous on a date. That tiny part suddenly seemed louder than everything else put together, and before she quite realized that she'd agreed Felicity was already turning the conversation back to the movie they'd just seen, babbling through an analysis of character motivations. Slade joined the conversation quickly, adding his own thoughts about the fight choreography, and laughing as she quipped about what could be construed as sexual tension between two of the manly-straight-men in the film. The laugh transformed him even more than the sheepish expression had, and for the rest of their drinks Felicity actually forgot who he was and why he was supposed to set her on edge.

 She hadn't driven to the theater since she lived only two blocks away, and when he found out Slade insisted on walking her home. By then the talk had turned from the movie to the strange world of business politics that they both had found themselves in, and Felicity was pleasantly surprised to find that they both shared a disdain for the masks of niceties that came with the territory. Several times his stories of boardroom faux pas made her laugh, the sound ringing off the nearby buildings.

 Soon enough they stood at the door of her townhome, and the realization that she'd spent an actually pleasant evening in the company of _the enemy_ came crashing down around her. Questions swirled to the forefront of her mind, the most prominent one being 'why?', but the vision of him staring at his drink while admitting to wanting to listen to her silenced them. Others danced up to take their place--everything from what his plans were to things he could have done and hadn't--but before she could open her mouth he grasped her hand. Looking down, she found it completely dwarfed in his much larger one, her pale skin and pastel blue fingernails standing out in stark relief against his tan, calloused palm. He cradled her hand as though it were a baby bird, the light pressure something she wouldn't have thought someone with Mirakuru in their veins capable of.

 "Thank you, Miss Smoak," he practically whispered. "This has been an evening for which I am entirely unworthy." Very slowly he lifted her hand, bending forward to meet it halfway as he placed a gentle kiss against her knuckles. As he lowered her hand again, he pressed it between both of his own and her fingers latched onto the stiff card in his palm of their own accord. He backed away from her and made his way down the steps, heading back the way they'd come. The card, she discovered, was a sharp business card with his name and several means of contact, but the number scrawled on the back matched none of them. Briefly, she wondered when he'd had time to do that.

 His strides were slow as he moved away from her, and all of Felicity's questions came bubbling back. There were dozens that plagued her. Out of all of them, though, was one that kept cycling back. One that had been bothering her since the day Oliver stormed into the foundry in a panic after a conversation with his little sister about how she'd made it home the night Roy staged their break-up.

 She had to ask.

 "Hey, Slade?" He turned back to her, one hand tucked into his pocket. "Why didn't you kidnap Thea? You had the perfect chance."

 He looked down, that same quirky half-smile crossing his lips before his eye found hers. One shoulder shrugged, and nothing but open honesty radiated from his face. "I thought it might upset you if I did."

 Felicity still stood there, gaping, long after he'd turned the corner and disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, and surprise! Switch to following Felicity. XD For the next part we'll be back in Slade's head, but I just knew the bar trip wouldn't work from his POV.


	5. Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original title of this chapter was "Internal Cat Fight". I had intended for a post-movie-and-drinks Slade to have to deal with battling hallucinations of Felicity and Shado, further complicating his internal crazy. Slade, it seems, had other ideas. Thus, this. A fair bit angstier than this story has been so far.
> 
> Also, as a result, things are progressing a lot faster than I'd intended. Don't worry, there will still be plenty of these two being confused and dancing around one another in the future. :D

**Part Five: Revelation**

 

"You've forgotten me."

 The sound of her voice alone was enough to spasm every muscle in his body. He'd thought she'd gone, his penance repaid. "I could never forget you." Nothing was ever that easy. "Not even if I wanted to try."

 He turned from the small window in his room and found her standing barely two feet from him. Long black hair cascaded over her back, and the same fatigues she'd been wearing on the island were slung low about her hips. "She's pretty, you know," she told him, hands tucked carefully behind her back. "I won't bother denying that, but I doubt she can even throw a decent punch. We both know your type is the fighting type." Defeat raced through him, his shoulders drooping, but something tiny began to burn in the pit of his stomach. "A woman who can't survive on her own?" She snorted. "Useless to you."

 Slade could neither shake the burning sensation nor figure out what was causing it. "Why are you here, Shado?" he growled, all too aware that his words were an echo of those he'd spoken to his brain's version of Felicity Smoak.

 The look she gave him could have melted steel, hard and angry. "You know exactly why, _Slade_." Her voice was more of a snarl than he could ever remember it being when she was alive. "You made a vow. Payment for the loss of my life. Is going for drinks with that dim witted blonde really going to help you fulfill it?"

 The burning sensation raced from the pit of his stomach straight to his throat, roaring with indignation. "Don't talk about her like that," he growled. No sooner had the words left his mouth than he found himself shocked at their existence. For the last five years, he had seen and spoken to Shado many times. Never once had he questioned her. Never had he directed anything but love, sorrow, or promises at her. When he finally got the courage to look up, her eyes were full of anger.

 "You claim to love me, and yet you can speak to me like that?" She prowled across the room until she was practically standing on his toes. "You _never_ loved me."

 He closed his eye, unable to look at her in such a state. Unbidden, memories of the island came pouring back. Shado taking him to the mats in a sparring bout. Her smile beneath the shade of the trees. Full of despair after the death of her father. Fearsome in battle. Speaking softly to him while she treated his extensive burns. Her naked body wrapped around Oliver's at the river, cracking his heart in two.

 Then, like a whisper beneath howling winds, he remembered the words she'd spoken to Oliver before the intimacy that he shouldn't have been there to see. _"Everyone has a demon inside of them."_ she'd insisted. _" The 'dao de jing' recognizes the yin and the yang, opposing forces inside all of us. The darkness and the light. The killer and the hero._ " His Shado, the one whose lifeless body he'd cradled so soon after awakening with the Mirakuru coursing through his veins, was not a woman of cruelty. The burning still swirling through his chest? He finally recognized it. Rebellion. Rebellion against the fabrications of his own overwrought mind.

 "I loved you, Shado," he breathed, his face screwing up as he fought to keep his eye closed. "More than you ever knew. More than I even admitted to." Her bright smile on the film reel he'd stolen lit up the back of his eyelid, a softness that he'd used to fuel his rage. Now, his chest ached with the shame of letting that rage consume him. He opened his eye, staring down into hers. "You were the brightest and most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on. Lethal, but so aware that being lethal didn't mean being a killer. You had the will to survive, but you never would have sacrificed humanity so completely." Tears streaked down his face, his voice growing rough. "I loved you. The real you. Whatever Shado has been talking to me for so long is not the woman I loved."

 Slowly--ever so slowly--she backed away from him. She drifted into the shadows of the room, and, finally, disappeared entirely. Turning his back on where she'd been, Slade strode from the room. He didn't bother to redress in his suit. He didn't bother to put on shoes. With nothing but defeat in his gait, Slade Wilson wandered out into the darkness of Starling City.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

At half past four in the morning, Felicity Smoak came awake with a jolt, her heart racing as she recognized the blurrily familiar surroundings of her bedroom. Oliver and the others may have thought she was joking about the kangaroos, but perfectly innocent marsupials didn't invade your dreams to eat your face and shove you in that creepy little pouch. At least, she assumed that perfectly innocent marsupials wouldn't do that. If, you know, perfectly innocent marsupials happened to exist.

 Personally, she was pretty sure that they didn't. Exist, that is.

 She fumbled on her nightstand for her glasses, settling them on her nose and pushing herself up to a sitting position. Once upright, she immediately froze. On the hope chest at the foot of her bed, his back to her and his shoulders bowed beneath a simple white a-shirt, was Slade Wilson. _Don't scream, don't scream, don't scream._

 "I'd really prefer it if you didn't."

 Brain-to-mouth filter: useless upon waking. "I think I can manage not to scream since you totally had the opportunity to make me while I was lying sprawled out on the bed and blind. Make me scream that is. By murder-y actions. Not that I'm thinking you'd make me scream any other way. I mean, I'm sure you could, but I'm definitely not thinking like that and I shouldn't even bring that up and I just woke up, so let's just pretend that none of that came out of my mouth and get back to you telling me why you're in my bedroom in the middle of the night."

 Slade's shoulders gave a little shake, and instinct told her that it wasn't from laughter. When he finally offered her an explanation, his voice was much rougher than she remembered, tempered by exhaustion and something that sounded like grief. "I didn't have anywhere else to go," he whispered.

 Slowly, carefully, she eased her way up out of the bed and crept around him, happier than she'd ever been that she'd chosen to sleep in modest shorts and a tank. She gave the man a wide berth, mindful that, no matter how much of a gentleman he'd been earlier that evening, he was still insanely dangerous. Sure, he might not be in a killing mood right now, but if being around Roy had taught her anything it was that Mirakuru enhanced emotional instability. Once she was standing in front of him, Felicity felt her mothering instincts come careening to the surface. He looked, for lack of a better description, completely broken. His feet were bare, and though she couldn't see any open wounds in the dim light of the nearby street lamp coming through her window (really, like he'd still have wounds with the super juice) she was pretty sure the dark shadows on them were actually dried blood.

 "Do you... want to talk?" she asked. "I don't have to talk. I've been told that I'm pretty good at listening." Clearly, she was losing her mind. First a movie, then drinks, and now encouraging conversation in her bedroom at an insane hour of the night. She might as well call ahead to Arkham in Gotham and reserve her room.

 His shoulders gave another shake as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and buried his head in his hands. "No one's ever asked me to talk about it." The admission was so faint that Felicity thought she might have imagined it, and when it sank in that she hadn't it nearly broke her heart. "On the island there was only the rage and the pain and actions to take." He drew in a shuddering breath, and she stayed rooted to her spot, absorbing every word. "Shado... she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw. She'd been through so much and she still saw the light in things. I hated Oliver so much for having her, and then for not choosing to save her." Slade's voice broke, and his next words were little more than sobs. "Ivo never would have caught them if they hadn't been trying to save me. If Shado hadn't insisted that they save me. All these years I've been plotting to make the kid pay, but... _I'm_ the reason she's gone."

 Felicity's heart broke for him all over again as he began to shake in earnest, grief and guilt wracking his muscular frame. This was something that she understood. Gone was the psychopath who'd been seeking blood and vengeance. At the foot of her bed sat a man who'd come to hate himself more than anyone else that he'd at one point chosen to blame. Her steps toward him were more confident than cautious this time. She might be naive, but she'd come to learn that no man could fake the heartsick pain that she could feel radiating from Slade in waves.

 Her hand brushed across his shoulder before sliding onto his back as she bent to wrap him in an awkward hug. His arms shot forward, snaking around her back and pulling her forward until he could bury his face in her stomach. She ran her fingers comfortingly through his hair, amazed that he still had the presence of mind to control his own crushing strength. They stayed like that for a long time, Felicity murmuring soothing nothings while Slade--and she was going to write this off as a dream in the morning--cried. Finally, his breathing began to slow, the sorrow lessening its grip enough that Felicity could pull back and coax him to look up at her. There was a question in his face, the same _'why would you do this?'_ that she'd seen so often on Oliver's.

 Before he could voice it, Felicity ran one hand through his hair. "Come on," she whispered gently. "This definitely calls for cocoa."


	6. The Friendly Ear Effect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, for all of you that have commented, I need you to know how amazing and wonderful you are. You make my days awesome, because every time I get to read another great comment I just light up all over. :) Thank you all, so much, and I hope to make every one of you laugh, cry, and thoroughly enjoy this little brain baby of mine.

**Part Six: The Friendly Ear Effect**

 

At her computers beneath Verdant, Felicity could not sit still. Every molecule in her body was on edge. She sucked at keeping secrets from her friends, but no one in their right mind would share what she'd been through that morning. The way that Sara and Oliver kept attacking the training dummy while ranting about Slade really wasn't helping. When she'd left to go do her Arrow duties, the one-eye Australian had been asleep on the floor of her living room with his head tilted back against her couch.

 She was fully aware of exactly how weird and wrong and utterly _insane_ it was that she hadn't taken the rest of the team home to put him out of his misery.

 But... he'd been so human. Human in the same way that she knew Oliver was human whenever that weird tough guy thing cracked and he let all of his emotions come rolling out onto the surface--and, consequently, her brain because he had this magic way of only doing that when she was there to listen. Maybe that was why Slade had decided to come to her. Somehow, Felicity's body emitted supersonic waves attracting the emotionally unstable and distraught. It was doubly effective if they'd been trapped on an island for an indeterminate amount of time. Even Sara had started coming to her. If more random Island Survivors started showing up, she could moderate their support group.

 The Friendly Ear Effect. That's what she was going to start calling it. And her desk at the community center where she moderated Island Survivors Nowhere Near Anonymous--ISNNA, now that could actually have a ring to it--would have a nifty little nameplate with "Felicity Smoak: Weird Emotional Issues Counselor Extraordinaire" on it. It would all be perfect.

 "Felicity!" She jumped and swung her arm in an arc all at once when Oliver's voice sounded loudly in her ear. He caught her wrist inches before she would have smacked him in the face and looked down at her with that irritating single eyebrow raised. How did he manage to convey so much with one barely altered expression anyway? "Have you listened to anything we've been saying?"

 "Umm..." Felicity bit her bottom lip. This was going to be a moment of truth. _You can do this,_ she assured herself. Because reassuring yourself always means that it's going your way. In a perfect world where super villains don't join you for movies, ask you to drinks, then appear all broken at the foot of your bed for a nice rant session. "I pretty much tuned it out as another 'Oliver and Sara rant about Slade' thing. That's what it was, right?"

 Oliver closed his eyes, breathing out harshly through his nose. "He's a dangerous man, Felicity." And that was the patented Oliver Queen Disappointed Voice. "You can't afford to tune these conversations out. It might be you that he comes after next, showing up at your house with murder in mind."

 She shuddered, but from the back of her brain came Slade's words at the theater. _There are thousands of people in this city. You are the one that I least want to die._ She had absolutely no reason to, but she trusted those words. Cocking her head to one side, she stared directly up into Oliver's eyes. "If Slade Wilson wanted to kill me, Oliver, I would already be dead." She made it to a silent count of four before the muscle in Oliver's jaw stopped twitching. He opened his mouth--probably to lecture her on The Dangers and such--but she cut him off first. "I'm not exactly the best on defense, and I'm clearly not the most important person on this team. He'll leave me for last at the very least. Now, I woke up at four thirty this morning after kangaroos tried to eat my face and I never got back to sleep after that so I'm insanely exhausted." All of a sudden, anger welled up inside of her. Talk of her nightmare sent visions of the main reason she hadn't gone back to sleep straight to her brain. _No one's ever asked me to talk about it._ She couldn't help but be a little mad at Oliver now. He'd been so close to Slade that they'd called each other brother, but when things got bad...

 "You know what?" she snapped, coming abruptly to her feet and sliding one arm through the strap of her purse. "I was going to tell you that I'm too tired for a lecture so we really needed to just get on with whatever vigilante club business we had for the night, but I think I'm actually too tired for any of it."

 "Felicity," Oliver started, reaching one hand toward her as she stepped back into her heels. She dodged, shuffling around her chair with both hands raised.

 "Nope. I am clearly in grumpy Felicity mode, and that means that certain angsty super heroes should just spend their evening jumping off of buildings and taking down whatever petty thieves are bothering with crime on this delightful Saturday." Backing toward the door, Felicity gestured at the lighted monitors of her baby. "If your mortal enemy should do something more nefarious than offering your little sister a ride home, I'm sure the alerts I've piggybacked on all of his aliases will let you know. Don't bother sending anybody to watch over my place because we all know there are better things for each of you to be doing than staking out my apartment on the off chance that the Evil Aussie from Hell decides to swing by and put a sword through my neck because reasons."

 Felicity was halfway to her apartment when the anger fuel abruptly dissipated. She'd be lucky if Oliver didn't beat her home, find the object of his dizzying concern, and challenge Slade to a fight that would level the entire block. Her insurance did not cover vigilante battles, and she'd just gotten the living room arranged the way she wanted it. Preferring not to risk it, she dug her phone out of her purse and dialed Sara's number. The other blonde had barely managed a breathless 'hello' before Felicity started to babble.

 "Oliver's not already careening towards my place is he? Not that I have anything to hide, because that would be silly since my life's an open book, but I could really just use a glass of wine and to sleep for a decade and I can't do that if I'm going to panic all night that he's going to come through my window all Arrow-y to lecture me and--"

 "Calm down," Sara cut her off. "He's taking his frustrations out on the salmon ladder." The familiar clang of the metal bar soothed Felicity more than the words. "It was touch and go for a few minutes, but Digg and I managed to convince him that you're just overstressed and need some normal rest." There was a brief pause, and Felicity could hear Sara moving through the foundry, the sounds of the workout equipment fading as she retreated toward the stairs. "Is there something you're not telling us, Felicity?"

 Sara didn't so much press the panic button as she sent it into overdrive. "What could I possibly not be telling you? I mean, there are a ton of things that I haven't told you like the time I snuck into the freezer in the middle of the night and ate three gallons of ice cream and had a tummy ache for a week but I didn't think that stories of my sugar high childhood were really the type of things that I needed to share. I could probably write a book about all of those but no there's nothing outside of those things that I'm hiding. Not that I'm hiding them. I just didn't think they were important and I said that already so counting back to make myself breathe."

 A tiny huff of laughter preceded Sara's response. "I didn't mean childhood stories. It's just--" Her voice dropped lower, giving the distinct impression that she was making sure Oliver and Diggle couldn't hear her. "You sounded really _sure_ that Slade wasn't going to come after you. Sure like you had some way of knowing." Sara faded into silence again as Felicity pulled up outside of her townhome. The living room light was on, and she knew she hadn't left it that way earlier. "You know, you can trust me, Felicity." A tiny shuffle crossed through the line as Sara switched the phone to her other ear. "If you want me not to tell them, I won't. But trust me when I say I know from experience how badly you just need someone to talk to about things."

 "I..." Felicity couldn't form the words. She couldn't see any shadows of movement through the drawn curtains, but having the light on meant that she definitely couldn't write off Slade's appearance as a dream. She really had left him asleep on her floor.

 "Look," Sara continued, "I know we all come to you a lot, and it's not fair that every one of us dumps our grief on you without hesitation. All I'm trying to say is that whatever might be going on with you, I'm willing to listen. I'm even willing to try not to swear at you for being an idiot if that's what I think you're doing."

 Felicity snorted, thinking about how purple Sara's face would turn if she told her everything. The other woman had a point, though. Sara was good at keeping secrets. If anyone on the team could be trusted not to spill the beans about the Slade Wilson Abnormality Train, it would be the former assassin. "Do you think we could get them to let us have a girl's night tomorrow?" she asked after a very long time. "You and me at my place where I've got the frequency jammers against bugs and several good bottles of wine?"

 Sara laughed. "They'll let us," she assured her. "Whether they let us voluntarily or I have to convince them on the mats will be a great story to start the evening. Your place at seven? Need me to bring anything?"

 "Seven sounds great. Depending on your feelings on wine, you might want to bring more. We'll just order in a pizza or something." Plans finalized, she and Sara hung up, and Felicity gathered her wits to face the imminent disaster waiting in her apartment. She braced herself for attack as she let herself inside. None came. Moving through the apartment at a cautious pace found it completely empty of Slade, but he'd left something behind in her kitchen.

 Dead center on the counter was an enormous bouquet of tiger lilies, already situated in the one vase she owned. The dishes she'd left in the sink from the early morning cocoa and the awkward meals afterwards were no longer there. A quick glance through her cabinets found them clean and in their proper places, a used dish towel folded neatly over the rim of the sink. Beside the vase of flowers was a single sheet of paper folded once and covered in a spiky black scrawl.

 

>   _Miss Smoak,_
> 
> _Words cannot convey my thoughts toward you for your kindness. I hope you'll accept flowers and a clean kitchen in place of what I fail to express. The tiger lilies reminded me of you. I also installed a timer on your living room lights. Statistically speaking, homes with lights on tend to deter robbers at night._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Slade Wilson_

 Gaping at the note, Felicity's brain was buzzing. She hadn't exactly expected him to still be around when she got home, but she certainly hadn't expected flowers and increased security either. A comfortable warmth spread through her, faintly coloring her cheeks, as she stared at the vibrant orange flowers. He'd said they reminded her of him. A lightbulb popped on in her head and she up-ended her purse on the counter. Bits of tech, trash, and make-up scattered, but it took her only seconds to sift through them for the card he'd given her after he'd walked her home. The card in one hand and her phone in the other, she made her way over to her couch, flopping on the cushions as she tapped out a message.

 

>   _Beautiful. How did you know that tiger lilies are my favorite?_

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And sorry for the funky block texting. In Word I have the letter and text message indented an extra half inch on both sides. I'm just too lazy to code that out instead of using the built in block text that AO3 has. :D


	7. They're Admiration Flowers, Felicity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not entirely convinced that I did a good job writing Sara. I like to think of her as the type that will listen to a friend's full story before making a judgement call, which is my explanation for her behavior here. Either way, I'm actually really happy with the way this chapter turned out. :)

** Part Seven: They're Admiration Flowers, Felicity **

 

"Whoa," Sara commented as she made her way into Felicity's kitchen. Her eyes had caught on the huge bouquet of tiger lilies sitting on the counter. "That's some admirer you've got, Felicity."

 The tech guru went from sweet and happy to a nervous wreck all at once. "Oh," she stammered, wide eyes traveling from Sara to the lilies and then to the bottle of wine she'd pulled out. She threw herself into opening it as though her life depended on it. "They're not from an admirer. I never have admirers. Not, you know, that I'm one of those pathetic people that lays on their couch every night sobbing into ice cream over not having admirers--I've only done that once, I swear, and with mint chocolate chip I fully believe that no one should be able to blame me--and people that do that aren't pathetic. I didn't mean that. Just that I'm not like that and the flowers were just here and--" Felicity cut herself off as the cork popped free. "Wine's open! Big glass for you? I'm going to have a big glass."

 Sara's eyebrows crept toward her hairline as Felicity fumbled two large wine glasses out of her cupboard, filling them nearly to the brim. She was positive that the other blonde was hiding something now, but given that stream of babble she decided not to press until there was at least one glass of wine in her. It was probably a good thing that Oliver had sent a box of twelve bottles along with her 'just in case.' At least there was no danger of them running out.

 Felicity turned toward her, flashing and unsure smile and holding out one of the glasses. "This is a 'bad day and Firefly got cancelled' size glass. I hope you don't mind, but I really do need to chill out and lots of wine is usually the best way to start that."

 Accepting the glass, Sara shook her head with a smile. "That's entirely what tonight is supposed to be about." She rolled her shoulders and slid onto one of the brightly upholstered bar stools at the counter. "We're going to pretend that vigilante activities are normal life things, eat pizza, drink lots of wine, and talk like normal girls do." She made sure to catch the other woman's eye. "And none of the boys will ever be told a single word of what we talk about from either of us."

 The look Felicity gave her was exactly what Sara imagined a very bad person who'd been given forgiveness at confession would give the priest. She bit her lip, briefly looking everywhere in the kitchen but at her guest. Finally, she turned her glass up and downed every drop of wine she'd poured in it. Felicity refilled the glass, turned back to Sara, and blurted the exact last thing the Arrow's girlfriend had expected to hear.

 "I think I went on a date with Slade Wilson."

 Sara blinked once, twice, thrice, and downed her own glass. Sliding it across the counter, she pushed herself up from the stool and reached for her phone. "Top me off and open another bottle while I order the pizza. This sounds like a story for many bottles, and we should make sure food's on the way while we're still coherent."

 

**_~*~*~*~*~*~_ **

 

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He _cried_? Are you sure you weren't still dreaming?"

 Red wine sloshed over the rim of Felicity's glass as she gestured violently, several droplets falling on the cardboard pizza box between them. "That's what I thought!" she exclaimed, taking a bite from the slice of pepperoni she held in her other hand. "But it was real!" Shoving one hand in her pocket, she produced the note she'd found next to her flowers. "I know it was real because he left this with the lilies!"

 Snatching the note unsteadily, Sara read it over three separate times before she actually absorbed the words. Finally, she passed it back, narrowing her eyes as the took another large mouthful from her own glass. "I thought you said the flowers weren't from an admirer?"

 Her face growing steadily more red, Felicity began to sputter. "Flowers for lending a friendly ear do not mean admiration!" she insisted, indignant. "Oliver, Diggle, and Roy could learn a thing or two and get me flowers for all the times I listen to their shit!" She clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide as she caught herself swearing, but a fit of giggles escaped and distracted her.

 "Tomato, to-mah-to," Sara muttered. "What happened next?"

 She listened raptly as Felicity explained the whole of her morning and afternoon with Slade, starting at mugs of cocoa shared at the kitchen table. The very thought of that man sipping cocoa and talking about his feelings caused Sara's eyes to gloss over, and she nearly missed the shocking revelation that he'd not only eaten the eggs and turkey bacon Felicity made for breakfast but had insisted on paying for take out to be delivered when her stomach rumbled around lunchtime. "--and then I told him that maybe we should watch a movie to take his mind off of everything and we threw in The Avengers and I was telling him all about how he kinda reminded me of The Hulk and then I looked over and he was asleep. Just sitting upright right over there, leaning against the couch, and sound asleep." Felicity bit her lip, frowning into her wine. "Villains aren't supposed to be adorable when they sleep."

 "Neither are angst-ridden vigilantes, but Oliver makes little spit bubbles like a cute baby sometimes," Sara admitted with a snort. "So, what then? You went to the foundry, came home, and he left you flowers?"

 "Not just the flowers, Sara." Felicity leaned forward, her gaze conspiratorial. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "He cleaned the frickin' kitchen." She downed her glass again, reaching out to refill it with the bottle resting on the far end of the pizza box. Nothing emerged when she moved to pour. "We need more wine."

 Gathering their feet unsteadily beneath them, both women wobbled toward the kitchen. Sara regained her perch at the counter while Felicity moved into the kitchen for a fresh bottle and a corkscrew. Idly, she reached out and stroked a finger along the petals of one of the lilies. "Felicity, these are Admiration Flowers," she insisted. "Flowers of liking you-ness and wanting to take all of your clothes off and do dirty things like Oliver and I do in the lair."

 "First, eww, I work in that lair and please don't ever give me details and if I find out the two of you have done the nasty on my desk I will end the both of you in ways that only a technical genius like myself c-can." Felicity hiccupped the last word, her nose scrunching up as she tilted their fourth bottle of wine over each of their glasses in turn. "Second, they are not!"

 Sara took another long drink of wine and pointed at her friend. "They so are. He even said in that note that they reminded him of you."

 "Lots of things remind people of me. I've got one of those personalities. Besides, if he meant them as liking me flowers he would have said something when we were texting after I got home." Felicity realized what she'd said a fraction of a second too late, eyes darting to where her phone rested on the floor beside the pizza boxes.

 She'd never make it before the ex-assassin, but she had to try.

 

**_~*~*~*~*~*~_ **

 

Slade was sitting on his bed, still trying to process the events of the previous day, when one of his phones began to buzz on the nightstand. He didn't bother to suppress the faint smile that crossed his lips when he saw Felicity's name on the screen. He thumbed open the message, read it, read it again, and frowned.

  _need help. my place. asap_

 It wasn't a question of whether or not he was going to answer her plea. No, he was already lacing on his boots. What worried him was how unlike Felicity the message seemed. In the texts they'd exchanged over the last day--slightly comical, blissfully normal texts--she had always been very proper in her grammar and capitalization. This message, however urgent, didn't read like it was written by her, and that worried him. Without bothering to respond he slipped the phone into his pocket, grabbed his keys, and jogged to his car out in the lot.

 Of all the dire situations he'd imagined on the entirely too long drive, nothing could have prepared him for what he found at Felicity's townhome. A loud giggle and a muffled 'it's open' answered his knock on the door. Turning into the living room, his eye widened in shock at the sight before him. Several empty bottles of wine lay strewn across the floor. An empty pizza box lay in the middle of it like a shrine. Turning to his left, he finally spotted Felicity, sprawled on her stomach on the couch with another bottle of wine dangling from her fingers. Sara Lance had made herself a wobbly seat on Felicity's backside, clutching a bottle of her own in one hand and Felicity's phone in the other.

 "Slade!" Sara called throwing her arms up and listing dangerously to one side. Felicity wriggled beneath her to take a swig from her bottle before twisting her head to grant Sara a glare.

 "I will utterly decimate your already questionable finances," she slurred.

 Sara snorted. "Oh hush," she huffed before turning her attention back to him. "Now, Slade, tell my friend here--" and there she patted Felicity's thigh as though he might not know who she meant, "--that those beautiful flowers you left her and the drink and the lunch and, what was I saying?" She frowned at her bottle before suddenly seeming to grasp her fuzzy thoughts. "Yeah! Tell her that all that means you like her. She won't listen to me."

 If Lian Yu had been Purgatory, this might actually be hell. 


	8. At the Bottom of Pandora's Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *wanders back into the fanfic world*
> 
> Um, hi everyone! Please don't kill me? XD Sorry for the entirely too long break between updates. I was out of the country for a while on vacation and then real life came to hand me my ass. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**Part Eight: At the Bottom of Pandora's Box**

 

The sun rose high over Starling City, creeping ever further toward the dreaded hour of noon. A single beam of light, bright and clear, found its way through the miniscule gap in the paisley purple curtains of Felicity Smoak's bedroom and landed, quite innocently, directly upon the eyes of the bedroom's owner. She growled with a viciousness that spoke volumes about the amount of pain such an innocuous beam of light caused and made to yank the sheet clutched in her hand over her face. The sheet protested. It took three more yanks on the fabric and another woman's muffled groan before Felicity realized that the 'sheet' she was clutching was, in reality, the back of Sara Lance's shirt.

 "Why does wine make the worst hangovers?" the former assassin groaned, burying her face further into the mattress. "Fifth of liquor? No problem. Ugh. I think I'm dying."

 Unable to voice a coherent answer, Felicity rolled away from the light. With a yelp, she found herself falling from the edge of the bed to land with a soft thump on the large, lime green shag rug that stretched over her floor. "Something with tannins, I think," she mumbled, sighing with sudden relief when she realized that the bed was now blocking the beam of light. Pillowing her head beneath her arms, she snuggled into the comfort of the rug. "Wine likes to say 'screw your skull, we'll kill it from the inside with a stampeding herd of jackhammers.' It's very annoying."

 After nearly an hour of mutual grumbling about their respective hangovers, Felicity and Sara finally managed to find their way out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen. Rather than the mess they were expecting, they found that the empty bottles had been discarded and the kitchen summarily tidied. The sink was devoid of dishes. The half full bag of trash in the can at the end of the counter had been replaced with an empty one. Two clear glasses of water sat on the counter, a small pile of pills beside each and a note in between them.

 

> _Vitamins and aspirin. Drink juice and eat greasy food._
> 
> _Slade_

 

"Well, here's something I never thought I'd say," Sara began, scooping one pile of pills into her hand and downing them all in one go. She chased the pills with an entire glass of water before fixing her eyes on Felicity. "And don't you dare tell Ollie I said it, but if Slade stops being a psycho, marry him."

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

It was midafternoon before Sara left Felicity's townhome. They'd seen no sign of Slade, and though together they'd managed to piece together most of the previous night, neither one of them could remember stumbling up the stairs to bed. Giving her motorcycle a brief once over (hangover cures not withstanding, there was no reason for her to believe Slade would pass up the opportunity for sabotage), she climbed on and set off across town. At first, she drove only for the sake of driving. The Glades became downtown and then the suburbs before a series of turns brought her through them and back to the Glades once more. She wandered aimlessly, mulling over everything she'd learned.

 Sara might not have remembered getting to bed, but she had a better memory than Felicity in regards to what happened after Slade had arrived. No amount of wine would have been able to dull her to the shock of actually seeing the amount of caring the man displayed toward her friend. Aside from the brief time he was injured, all Sara had ever known of Slade was the enraged man he'd become after the Mirakuru. If she didn't know any better, she would have sworn that the man who'd walked into Felicity's living room wasn't even the same person. However drunk she may have been, the man she met the previous night bore a strong resemblance to the gruff near-brother Oliver described Slade as being before Shado's death.

 Hope was not her strong suit. She'd seen too much, done too much. Hope was a weakness built on the lies people told themselves when they were too scared to face the truth. Hope was what made her spend too many nights dreaming of some way to escape the killer's calling she'd gained with the League. She knew better now. Over five years of pain--both what had been to her and what she'd done to others--had made sure of that.

 Still, she couldn't help the tiny fluttering of what a younger Sara would recognize as hope rising up in her heart. The Slade who had picked up wine bottles for two drunk blondes was the kind of man she could respect. The Slade who'd cooked late night scrambled eggs and toast was the kind of man Felicity desperately needed. The Slade who looked out for others even if it meant putting out aspirin and water for the morning after was a man that Oliver could call his brother once more. If everything was going the way she suspected might after what she'd seen, there would be s much more to gain than Felicity finally having a man show her the attention she deserved.

 Slade's scars were finally scabbing over, and as they healed some of Oliver's just might do the same. It wasn't much--barely anything to write home about--but it was still there. Hope.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Shado hadn't reappeared. Slade had been expecting her, particularly after he'd rushed out in response to a single text from Felicity's phone. Not long ago, not seeing her would have thrown him into a rage filled panic that very likely would have ended dozens of lives. Actually, there was still a little bit of panic somewhere in the back of his mind, but it had been pinned in by that sense of shame at using Shado for a mission of vengeance against a man they had both loved. Outside the wall of shame were the warm, golden flowers of Felicity Smoak's new and entirely unexpected presence in his life.

 For the first time in years, Slade Wilson was very nearly at peace.

 There was still so much anger. A tidal wave of grief had crashed down on him all over again since the night he first visited Felicity's townhome, but the grief was different this time. Before it had been all-consuming, almost as though the grief itself was keeping his body and mind moving even more than the Mirakuru. Now, though his heart hurt and Shado was still never far from his thoughts, it felt as though he might be moving toward healing rather than wallowing in his loss. It was so foreign, feeling like he might be able to be human again. What was more, it was terrifying. There was so much he'd thrown away, and he wasn't sure he knew how to live a life without grief as his focus anymore.

 Every time he began to descend into those fears, Felicity's face appeared behind his eyes. He hadn't hallucinated her since he'd met the real thing, but she was still there. Shado was his grief, his pain, his past. In Felicity he could almost see the tiny, fluttering wings of a hopeful future. Almost wasn't perfect. It wasn't everything he needed, and almost wasn't enough for him to give her. But almost was a start.

 The fine hairs on the back of Slade's neck stood on end all at once. His first instinct was to turn and kill, but the wind shifted and he recognized the perfume of one of them women he'd carried to bed the night before. He neither moved nor turned to look as Sara settled beside him, dangling her legs over the edge of the roof and leaning back to look up at the stars. Either she was a phenomenal tracker to have found him or he had gotten entirely too sloppy in his introspection. Some part of him even believed it could be both.

 "We need to talk," the young assassin stated bluntly after several long moments.

 "How original," he grumbled petulantly before finally turning his eyes upon her. "If this is the part where you tell me to stay away from your friend, Sara, I think we're going to have a problem." Her reaction was one he had not expected.

 She snorted. "After watching the two of you make grade school moon eyes at each other last night that conversation is the last one I'm worried about." Sara tilted her head slightly, sizing him up from the corner of her eye. "Do I even want to know how all that came about from your perspective? I mean, I could see you doing the creepy stalking thing while planning the rest of our deaths."

 To his credit, Slade actually managed to look a little sheepish as he turned away from her, scrubbing one hand across the back of his neck. "My heart's not exactly been in the death planning lately."

 "Oh, trust me, we've noticed, and I, for one, am extremely grateful." Sara paused and the air thickened around them, a sort of tension he wasn't sure how to recognize anymore. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. "Look, I spent most of my afternoon and evening thinking about what you've been through and the things you've done. If I'd been in your place... If it had been Ollie that had been killed, I don't think I would have reacted any differently than you did." She sighed, but continued before he could say anything. "I'm not saying I forgive you, because that is a whole other mess that we just don't have the time for. But I am saying that I maybe understand you a little bit."

 "You don't sound as though you're convinced that's a good thing," Slade quipped, turning back to her just in time to catch an exasperated look.

 "Of course I'm not convinced that's a good thing. You have done so much horrific damage that I am seriously questioning why I'm not killing your ass here and now." Sara scrubbed her hand over her face. "That is not the subject I need this to turn to. Whatever you have with Felicity, it's actually making her happy. More over, it's making you less psychotic. That sounds like a win-win."

 Slade's heart began to thud louder in his chest. He was making Felicity happy. "And that's what you wanted to talk to me about?"

 "Oh, no, nothing that simple." The grin Sara turned on him then was downright feral. "You see, I wanted to get to see the look on your face when you realize that if you actually want to be able to have anything with Felicity, you've got one serious issue to get past first."

 "Get to the point, Sara, or I might go back to plotting your death again."

 "You have to fix things with Oliver."


	9. The Best Compliment A Girl Could Get

** Part Nine: The Best Compliment a Girl Could Get **

 

Hood up, mask in place, and a quiver of freshly sharpened arrows on his back, Oliver Queen rode across Starling City toward the still-ruined section of the Glades. The barely softened edges of the note he'd found on his desk at Queen Consolidated that morning scraped across his chest from where he'd tucked it against his skin. He didn't need to see the writing to remember what it said, but the sting of its edges was the constant reminder he did need that he hadn't been dreaming.

 

> _No tricks, no fight. I only want to talk._
> 
> _-Slade_

 

Barely a hundred yards from the entrance to the factory whose address had been listed beneath his former friend's name, Oliver whipped the bike to one side, pulling a tight turn and speeding away once more. He'd made this circuit three times already, but he still couldn't seem to go through the ruined gate and face Slade. Felicity and Diggle had both been suspiciously absent when he'd reached the foundry that evening, and though he'd expected a vehement protest against him meeting Slade from Sara, his girlfriend had merely given him a solemn nod. He'd been starting to feel as though he was constantly in the dark about something as of late, and this drastic change in Sara was solidifying the thought. Oliver was sure that if Sara thought Slade was a threat to him she never would have let him go. By that logic, Sara obviously didn't find the older man a threat.

 Remembering her constant insistence that Slade was a vicious murderer, Oliver whipped the bike around once more. Something had convinced Sara. He was never going to figure out what that something was if he kept circling the city avoiding his steadily growing list of questions. Rather than turning at the gate, this time the Arrow rode straight through. He left the bike in the ruined lot, climbed a crumbling fire escape to a higher vantage point, and entered the building with an arrow nocked and ready.

 The man A.R.G.U.S. had dubbed "Deathstroke" was not the one Oliver found standing in the middle of the abandoned factory's floor. Gone was the classy suit and self-satisfied manner. What he found in their place were worn cargo pants, combat boots, an a-shirt, and the heavily slumped shoulders of a man overcome with grief. When Oliver paused at the edge of the landing, arrow aimed squarely at the back of Slade's head, the older man slowly raised empty hands into the air.

 "Put it away, kid," Slade called, his voice rough. "I said no fight, and I meant it." As slowly as he'd lifted his hands, Slade turned, his face tilting slowly up until their eyes met.

 The absence of the lunacy Oliver had come to think of as familiar in those eyes brought the bow down. "What do you want, Slade?"

 With a wry smile, Slade lowered his hands, hooking his thumbs through the front pockets of his pants. "Pretty sure I said I wanted to talk. You didn't forget to how to read with all those years on that god-forsaken island, did you?"

 "You know what I mean," Oliver growled, his hand twitching against the grip of the bow.

 "I do," Slade admitted with a sigh. "Look, kid, there's nothing I can say that will make this conversation any easier, so I'm going to be blunt about it." He took a slow, deep breath and cast his eyes to the floor. "I'm falling for your little tech queen, and your lady said that if I want a shot I'm going to have to fix things with you."

 The bow clattered from Oliver's hands. There were a lot of ways this entire situation could have gone, and the myriad of violent options were the ones he was banking on when he finally parked the bike. This was a loop he wasn't sure how to be thrown for. He stared as Slade shifted back and forth, an eerie picture of the irritated patience he'd shown with Oliver before Shado and the Mirakuru. One by one, a series of puzzle pieces clicked into place. Felicity's distraction. A 'girl's night' he was expressly forbidden to crash. Sara's lack of protest at his agreeing to this meeting. A man in that moment looking less like a psychopath and more like the brother he'd loved and respected.

 "I think--" His voice cracked and Oliver cleared his throat. "I think you'd better start a little further back. It sounds like this could be a bit of a long story."

 

_**~*~*~*~*~*~** _

 

Felicity huffed as she slammed her way out of her car and up the stairs to her front door. Sara had sent her off on what she now recognized as a suspicious coffee errand to the far end of town, which made her so late getting to the foundry that Oliver had already gotten hooded up and left for the evening. Headed out, of course, to a completely undisclosed location without an earbud or any tracking device to speak of. To make matters worse, Diggle had taken Roy off on some training excursion that Felicity was sure Sara had suggested. So, instead of getting some not-entirely-illegal vigilante work done, Felicity had spent the entire night either worrying that Oliver was going to die without them, glaring at Sara for not being worried that Oliver was going to die without them, or wishing Sara would shut up because her not-relationship with Slade was not a good sober discussion topic.

 She fell back against her front door when it closed behind her, thumping her head against the wood and kicking the bright pink heels from her feet. She shrugged her purse from her shoulder to fall beside the heels, not bothering to pick it up and place it neatly on the table inside her door. With a shuffling gait, she made her way into the kitchen, moving absently by the light of the timed living room lights as she made her way to the stove and started making a batch of cocoa. Operating almost entirely on autopilot, she never noticed that she wasn't alone.

 "Hello, Felicity."

 With a startled shriek Felicity whirled about, her hip colliding painfully with the handle of the oven door while the mug in her hands fell to shatter against the tiled kitchen floor. Slade was sitting on her couch, one of her many books balanced in his lap. He watched her with an intense gaze.

 "Sweet mother of Google!" she cried, jabbing a finger in his direction. "Bell. Neck. Look into it. Better yet, there's a nifty bell attached to the door. It's meant to let people know you're there to visit before you actually come into their home. Though, now that I think about it, none of the men in my life ever seem to grasp that concept no matter how many times I explain it, so let's just go with this: if you're going to be all sneaky and hanging out in here when I'm not home do me a favor and let me know you're there before I'm in a position to break things."

 Slade gave a gentle snort of laughter and closed the book, sliding it onto her coffee table. Before Felicity could gather her thoughts enough to comment on the laugh, he was kneeling before her, gathering the fragments of her mug into his large hands. "Startling you wasn't my intention," he insisted, scooping up the last of the fragments and standing to deposit them in the trash can. "I promise I haven't been here for long."

 Suddenly nervous from the intensity of his gaze on her, Felicity turned her back on him. "Let's just try not to make a habit out of scaring the fragile IT girl," she quipped, stretching up on her tiptoes to pull two mugs down from the top shelf. Before her hand could reach the mugs, she felt the warmth of Slade's body against her back. He reached past her to lift the mugs down himself, and before he stepped away Felicity could almost swear he tilted his head to sniff at her hair. Her heart hammered against her chest as he placed the mugs on the counter and retreated across the room, the sudden coolness against her back making her shiver. With a deep, almost shaky breath she resumed the cocoa making process. "So, what brings you by tonight?" she asked, forcing her voice to be bright in spite of her nerves. "If you're planning to grill me for information on Oliver I'm pretty useless. He ran off without a word tonight."

 "Oliver was having a conversation with me, actually," Slade admitted, his voice low. Nearly knocking another mug to the floor, Felicity turned to him with wide eyes. "An actual conversation," he assured her, "with words and no punches thrown." He reconsidered, looking away from her briefly. "Well, one punch was thrown, but I might have provoked it."

 Still gaping, Felicity pointed a spoon at him. "Why were you and Oliver 'conversing' tonight?" she asked after a long moment.

 The sheepish expression Slade had given her at the bar returned as he looked everywhere but directly at her face. "I wanted to fix things," he admitted quietly. "For you."

 The spoon dropped to the floor from Felicity's suddenly numb fingers, and she vaguely registered that he was inducing a habit of dropping things in her. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean to tell me that you decided to have a civil conversation with the guy that you've been plotting to make miserable for the last five years? No reservations about it, just have a nice chat over coffee and fix all the deep seated issues?" His silence was more telling than any answer could have been. "Because of me? Seriously? Look, I know I'm a great distraction with the goofy babble and that I can sometimes be a little awesome with the whole listening to problems and then making the world's most fantastical healing cocoa thing, but while I'm more than happy to think that you won't be going all murder-y on my friends I really don't think I'm worth giving up five years of dedication and--"

 Slade cut her off, his eye boring into hers. "You are worth giving up a lifetime of dedication," he insisted. Before Felicity could start babbling again, Slade stepped up closer, grasping her chin in one hand. "Felicity, you make me want to fix something I've spent the last five years trying to destroy because I thought I wasn't worthy of having it. You make me feel like I can move on--like I can heal."

 Felicity could feel tears welling up in her eyes even as a wide grin spread across her face. For once, she didn't feel the need to over think. "Well, we're just going to slap that at the top of the 'Best Compliments a Girl Could Get' list." Reaching up, she gently tugged his hand from her chin, wrapping her tiny fingers around his with a brief squeeze before letting go. "Now, you're going to let me finish making this cocoa. We're going to sit on the couch and you can explain exactly how this 'conversation' of yours went. Then, we're going to put in The Avengers because I'm still irritated that you fell asleep before I got to explain why the Hulk reminds me of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I don't think I've explained this ever, but I work for an anime convention called Ikasucon as one of the three Directors. I really should have tried to get this finished before the con, as the last two months have been nothing but serious stress. XD However, I'm back now! There's only three chapters left to go and then this one will be finished. :)


	10. Daring But Misguided Naked Time Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! As it turns out, aiming to finish a chapter immediately prior to a con is just not in the stars for me. Just two left after this!

**Part Ten: Daring But Misguided Naked Time Rescue**

When the sun rose again over Felicity Smoak's townhome at the edge of The Glades, there was still one person inside who had yet to sleep. With one arm stretched over the back of the couch, Slade watched the young woman beside him snore lightly. She'd fallen asleep before she'd gotten the chance to explain to him just what it was about the Incredible Hulk that reminded her of him, but none of that mattered. After giving her nearly every awkward detail of his conversation with Oliver--including the part where the Arrow had punched him--she'd done nothing more than laugh lightly and order him to start the movie. The evening had been a celebration in companionship like he hadn't known in years.

 Felicity shifted, stretching out from the tight ball she'd curled herself in on the couch cushions. Slade's breath caught in his throat as her head came to rest on the outside of his thigh, one hand curling into the top of one of the pockets of his cargo pants. His body knew that he needed sleep, but every corner of his brain wanted to avoid the chance of breaking the sweet magic that had settled over him. For the last few hours, his mind had been blissfully quiet. Peace seemed to be the gift that Felicity's mere presence could give him.

 On the kitchen counter, Felicity's phone began to emit a loud screeching that had an immediate and surprising effect on its owner. She shot up from his lap and leaped from the couch in a single motion, bolting to the counter and immediately turning the alarm off. Without a glance at him, she switched on the coffee pot and shuffled out of the kitchen toward the stairs, mumbling to herself the entire way. Slade couldn't help but chuckle. It was as though in the light of the morning she couldn't focus enough to realize she wasn't alone in her home. Her footsteps grew faint as she traveled up the stairs toward her bedroom, and Slade found himself at a sudden loss as to what to do. Following her was the guaranteed way to ruin whatever it was he was finally letting himself start, but if the way she'd reacted the previous night when she'd found him waiting on the couch was any indication that option was also off the table.

 Memories of the simple breakfast she'd made him the first time he'd come to her home popped up unbidden, and he began to smile. At the very least, he could return that favor now.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Halfway through lathering shampoo into her hair, Felicity realized with a start exactly how and next to whom she had awakened. Her head had been _on his thigh_. His very large, definitely quite muscled thigh and there was no way she was seriously going to start following that train of thought right now. Mornings were not her strong suit, and if she combined that with the fact that she wasn't used to having house guests when she had to get up for work, it could lead to disaster. Especially since she'd been gaping at her own obliviousness with wide eyes that were now being treated to a healthy dose of shampoo dripping into them.

 "Dammit!" she screeched, splashing her face vigorously to rinse away the soap.

 Heavy, booted footfalls echoed up from the stairs, and Felicity began to panic. Like she would any other morning where a _former_ psychopath wasn't hanging out in her living room after cocoa, conversation, and a movie, she hadn't bothered to close the bathroom door. She was naked, blinded by soap, and had her hair piled atop her head in a mountain of suds. And it was entirely likely that said former psychopath thought a ninja had come through her tiny bathroom window to try and murder her and he was going to burst through the open doorway and tear the curtain off the shower rail to try and protect her.

 "I'M FINE!" she shouted as loudly as she could, scrubbing at her eyes. The footfalls stopped. "There are no ninjas just evil shampoo dripping where it shouldn't because I got sidetracked and stopped tilting my head back so please don't come up here because I'm already embarrassed that I forgot you were here and we don't need to add a daring but misguided naked time rescue to the pile of reasons why mornings are my mortal enemy."

 Even though he was obviously trying to keep it quiet, Slade's chuckle still reached her. "Alright," he called up. "I promise not to come to your rescue this time." The flirty emphasis he put on 'this time' sent her brain straight back to the muscled thigh she'd been using as a pillow even as she heard him retreating back down the stairs.

 Once her eyes had finally stopped burning Felicity rushed her way through the rest of her shower. Shutting the water off, she peeked around one corner of the shower curtain and craned her neck to see down the stairs. Reassured that Slade wasn't in sight, she wrapped the shower curtain partially around her body and stretched forward to snag a towel off the rail. She retreated behind the curtain to dry off.

 On any other day, Felicity would happily drag through her getting ready routine, shimmying to whatever pop songs filtered out of Spotify radio, but with Slade doing Google-knew-what downstairs she found herself rushing through instead. Something that certainly had nothing to do with the smell of turkey bacon drifting up the stairs while she was blow drying her hair. Nothing at all to do with that. When she finally popped down the stairs and through the archway into the living room, she found the surprising sight of Slade at her stove, scrambling eggs in her wok while the turkey bacon sizzled in her only frying pan. It wasn't so much the thought of him cooking that surprised her as it was the way she felt like him cooking _for her_ was absolutely right.

 "Ahem." She cleared her throat to get his attention, giving a flirty little twirl she didn't know she had in her when he looked up. "Do I look like I belong in my day job?"

 Slade's eyes drifted all the way down to her feet and back up, raking over her body slowly as one corner of his lips quirked below the eyepatch. "Entirely too beautiful to be wasted as the kid's assistant if you ask me."

 The heated flush crawling over her body burned out any resistance Felicity might have had to a flirty breakfast. "So long as you aren't thinking what everyone else at QC thinks about this bit of beautiful as an assistant. I mean, yeah, Oliver's got the brooding, cut, billionaire thing going for him, but I have a feeling you might deny me food and coffee if you start getting into the belief that I slept my way to the top or something." She squeezed her eyes shut. Mentioning that she thought Oliver was hot was definitely not the best way to start the morning with the crazy guy who'd just kind-of-sort-of confessed the night before that he might just have a thing for her. "And with that I have successfully proven that I cannot be human before coffee so I am going to shut up and get myself a cup and work on giving you puppy eyes until you let me have food."

 Slade gave another of his soft, snorting laughs. "You sit. I'll get the coffee," he insisted. By the time she'd settled in at her own kitchen table, he'd settled a large mug of coffee, the bottle of creamer from her fridge, and a plate piled with scrambled eggs, toast, and turkey bacon in front of her. "I hope it turned out alright. It's been a while since I've cooked for someone." Hoping to reassure him, Felicity took a bite of the eggs, closed her eyes, and outright moaned.

 "Did you use butter? Because this definitely tastes like you used butter which is something I don't let myself do but always love." She shoveled in another bite with a sigh. "Don't cook for anyone. Seriously, if you do you're going to lose your manic slice-and-dice career to someone forcing you to be their personal chef." When she opened her eyes to fix him with a beaming smile, she found that he'd settled across from her with a plate and mug of his own, the faintest hint of a blush on his cheeks. "You didn't have to make me breakfast, you know."

 "I know," Slade admitted, stirring a tiny bit of creamer into his coffee. "I wanted to." They ate in companionable silence for a few moments, Felicity practically inhaling her first mug of coffee before sliding from her chair to pour another. She topped off Slade's mug without being asked, frowning at the coffeepot when she realized how easy the pattern was to fall into. The sound of Slade's voice drew her back to the table. "May I ask you something?"

 "Sure thing!" she chirped, pouring creamer into her coffee until it was nearly as light as chocolate milk.

 "May I cook you dinner?"

 In that moment, Felicity decided that hot coffee being snorted through one's nose could easily become a preferred form of torture. She coughed a couple of times before looking up at him with wide eyes. Slade was staring at his plate, fork moving idly through his eggs, and she realized with a sudden flutter in her stomach that, despite his bluntness, he was actually nervous. "Is this you asking me on a date?"

 "It is." He started fiddling with his fork, twirling it between his fingers. "My apartment doesn't have a full kitchen, so I'd have to cook here, but if that makes you uncomfortable I could take you out to a restaurant. It's just..." he trailed off before finally looking back up into her eyes. "I have no intentions of returning to my previous plans, but there were others involved. I would not have you put in harm's way by appearing publicly with me before they are neutralized."

  _Of course,_ her brain snarked. _I might as well install my own microchip tracker, since every man in my life seems to be the crazy overprotective type._ "I can understand that," she admitted with a sigh. "Thus is my life: always in danger for the weirdest of reasons." She chewed on her lip for a moment, watching as he returned to his nervous fiddling. The whole situation was beyond weird, but he was sweet, and he liked her so much that he'd actually started to make an effort with Oliver. "I would love to have dinner with you, Slade. Especially if you're planning to cook."

 He stared at her for a long moment before a wide smile crossed his face. Unlike the smirks and grins she'd seen before, there was no hint of the weight of his grief in this smile. "You'll have to tell me what kind of foods you like. I'm not bad at Italian, but I can follow a recipe, so nothing's outside the realm of possibility." He stood to gather their plates, taking them to the sink. Without another word he turned on the faucet and started to clean up.

 "Sara would flip if she saw this," Felicity muttered, leaning back to check the time on her kitchen clock. If she stayed any longer, she was going to be late getting to work. Pushing herself back from the table, she stepped into her heels and straightened her skirt. "I've got to get out of here, so text me and we'll work out the details." Absently, she stopped beside him at the sink and pressed a kiss to his cheek, not even registering the way he froze as she never lost momentum on her way to the door. "Don't forget to lock up if you go out. I don't need some desperate thug thinking my collection of troll dolls is up for snatching and Ebay sale!"

 She'd been at her desk for an hour before it all actually registered in her brain.

 Behind the glass walls of his office, in the middle of a meeting with Isabel Rochev, Oliver Queen quirked an amused eyebrow when his assistant let out a loud, frustrated groan and thumped her head against her desk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is having trouble picturing Felicity's townhouse through my rather vague descriptions, please let me know. I actually went into the Sims 3 and built it so I could have a frame of reference. XD I'd be happy to add some screencaps here and there if I need to. Hell, I might just write a separate ficlet with the backstory of how she got the place.


	11. Get to It, Super-Spy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may have gotten away from me a little bit. XD I nearly doubled my average chapter word count. Enjoy the date!

**Part Eleven: Get to It, Super-Spy**

"So, can I assume from the emergency call to lunch that you saw Slade last night?"

 Felicity was trying very hard not to be annoyed at the knowing look on Sara's face. Apparently, she was the only one who hadn't been aware of his little chat with Oliver before it happened. "Sometimes, I totally hate all of you in that not-really-because-I-love-you-but-your-knowing-glances-irritate-me kind of way," she groaned, leaning back from the table as their waiter settled their salads and two glasses of white wine in front of them.

 Sara laughed. "Of course you do. If I'm remembering my pre-assassin days correctly, that's exactly how friendship is supposed to work."

 "Touché," Felicity admitted, spearing a hunk of tomato with her fork. "I completely forgot he was there this morning and took my shower with the bathroom door wide open." Across the table, Sara choked on a bite of her own salad and began to cough violently.

 "He stayed the night!?" she exclaimed in a loud whisper. "I didn't think you'd jump into this that quickly!"

 Glancing wildly from side to side, Felicity waved her hands in protest. "No, no! Not like that! We didn't sleep together. Well, we did sleep together, but in the snoring and cuddly drooling--not that I was drooling--way instead of the sweaty, naked, legs shaking kind of way."

 "Think he's good enough to get your legs shaking, do ya?" Sara quipped, quirking one eyebrow over the bite of salad on her fork. She fought hard not to laugh aloud as Felicity's face turned a brilliant shade of scarlet. "Still adorable." Clearing her throat, she took pity on her friend and turned the conversation back to more serious matters. "So, what's the issue?"

 Felicity released a long-suffering sigh. "I really like him." She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration. "Which is obvious. It's just... if he were any other guy I wouldn't have to think about it, you know? But no matter how sweet and caring and insanely attractive he is, there's this looming shadow of his serious crazy murderer time. For all I know, getting me to fall for him is just another part of his master plan."

 "Well," Sara reasoned, trading her fork for the glass of wine at her elbow, "there are really two ways you can handle this. You can either keep freaking out because of his history and all of the what-ifs or you can go for broke and do the Felicity thing that we all love you for." Felicity's brows furrowed and she opened her mouth to ask for clarification, but Sara cut her off. "You give him the benefit of the doubt. You see the best in people, Felicity. You believe with everything that you are that people can be better. I envy that most about you, because when everyone else is ready to throw in the towel, you still have a massive reservoir of hope." She drained what was left of her wine and leaned forward, one hand closing over the top of Felicity's on the table. "For reasons I can't really fathom, you're interested in the guy. He's obviously interested in you if calling off a five year grudge match to have a shot with you is anything to go by. If you think you can use your superpower to keep seeing the best in him, I say take that option and go for it."

  

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Felicity chewed on her lip for the entire drive home from Queen Consolidated that night. Through a series of overtly flirty text messages, she and Slade had agreed that he would have dinner ready by seven at her place while she would pick up something for dessert that they could make together. Netflix was primed and ready for an after-dinner movie. All in all, it was one of the better date plans she'd had.

 She was lucky that Sara hadn't been scheduled at Verdant that night. The other blonde had graciously retrieved a spare dress that Felicity kept at the foundry for when vigilante activities became an overnight affair. It wasn't much--just a sweet little sundress that could barely pass as work appropriate--but it made Felicity feel better to not be having dinner with Slade in the same stuffy business clothes he'd seen her leave in that morning. She'd even let her hair down from its usual ponytail before she'd left the office.

 By the time she put her car in park at her place, her stomach was tying itself in knots. Though the living room lights were shining through drawn curtains, she couldn't see any; sign that Slade was inside. Of course, not seeing any sign was practically a guarantee that he _was_ there. She checked her watch. There were less than ten minutes before seven o'clock and she was sitting in the car like a nervous teenager.

 Finally, she forced herself from the car, snagging her purse and the small shopping bag full of brownie ingredients from the passenger seat as she went. The first thing she noticed when she walked through the front door was the pumpkin pie scent of some of her favorite candles. Tilting her head through the archway, she spotted Slade at the stove, stirring a sauce that looked suspiciously homemade rather than the straight-from-the-jar variety she was used to. He'd changed since that morning as well, swapping the worn tank and cargo pants for a sleek black button down and--this was the kicker--an actual pair of _jeans._ The kind of jeans that had her tilting her head even further to one side while she admired the way they hugged his backside.

 "Tight jeans on an ass like that should be illegal," she blurted, her face coloring briefly before she stepped cautiously through the arch. The scented candles were grouped on the lazy susan in the middle of her modest kitchen table, burning happily and comfortingly where someone with a fancier mind might have lit tapers. Slade didn't bother to turn to her, but she caught the twitch of a smile on the corner of his lips.

 "I am a criminal, you know," he reminded her, leaning over the pot of sauce to lift the lid off a larger one she didn't recognize and check on the pasta.

  _See the best, Felicity,_ she coached herself. "If your continued law-breaking means more tight jeans, I don't think I want you to go straight." Setting the dessert bag on the counter, she paused. "Straight like not breaking any laws, not straight like the sexuality. I mean, not that I would care if you were bi or whatnot, just that I want your sexuality to include me in there somewhere. New train of thought. Where did that big pot come from?"

 "My sexuality definitely includes you," Slade commented, finally turning from the stove to look at her. His lips parted at the sight of her and he wet them briefly with his tongue, momentarily startled at her changed appearance. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel he'd tucked through his belt, his eye traveling to her feet and all the way back up to her face at a pace that made Felicity's stomach flip. "You didn't have a pot big enough to make a decent amount of pasta. I made sure it matched your others. You changed."

 "Well, yeah," she admitted, fluffing one corner of her skirt in her hand. "Showing up to a date in work clothes just seems rude."

 Slade gave her another of his barely-there smiles and gestured toward the table. "Go ahead and settle in. This just needs a few more minutes."

 Dinner turned out to be a rousing success that combined some sort of delicious homemade tomato sauce with pasta and tiny bites of breaded chicken. Slade wouldn't let her see the bottle for the fantastic cabernet he kept pouring, claiming that if she liked it that much not giving her the vintage would give her a reason to keep him around. Personally, Felicity suspected that he'd brought some sort of insanely expensive bottle and didn't actually want her to know how much it might have cost. As soon as that suspicion first crossed her mind, she decided that she was going to kiss him for it. It wasn't that she really cared about expensive things versus cheap ones, but the fact that he wanted to treat her with something nice without giving her a chance to feel bad that she couldn't afford it herself? Yeah, he was winning a crap ton of points and he didn't even know it.

 He won even more points when she asked where his recipe had come from. "My son, actually." A vague smile crossed his face, and Felicity was able to hide her surprise in the short moment where he drifted into memory. He shook his head and met her gaze, the smile turning a little lopsided. "I'm not sure if Oliver's told you that I have a kid. He's--Christ, the kid's thirteen now." Felicity gave him an encouraging smile. Oliver hadn't told her, but she'd dug up enough in her own searches that it wasn't a surprise. "When he was little, Joe wouldn't eat anything that didn't look like it at least included chicken nuggets. I used to make all kinds of things with bite-sized chicken to get him to try new things." He dropped his gaze from her face back to his plate, spearing one of the nuggets and twining some pasta around his fork. "Chicken parmesan was one of his favorites."

 "What about your wife?" No sooner had the question left her mouth than Felicity was regretting it. She tossed her head back, staring up at the ceiling. "Which is a part of conversation I should have eased into rather than blurting it out like a demand after such an adorable story."

"It's alright," Slade reassured her with a chuckle. "We divorced when Joe was three. She didn't like being married to a spy."

 "Didn't like being married to a James Bond type? Was she crazy?" Felicity teased. The tension broke, and they returned to a happy banter through one big plate for her and two for Slade. She showered him with compliments, genuinely impressed that he'd found time to be such a good cook between his work for the ASIS, being trapped on Lian Yu, and five years of vengeance.

 They did the dishes together, Slade washing ("Can't have you messing up that eye-stabbing neon nail polish." "Watch it. I'll have you know that this doesn't even scratch the surface of my collection of eye-stabbing colors, and you've only got one eye left.") while Felicity dried. She watched him carefully, looking for the perfect opening. It came when he dug out a bowl to start the brownie batter in, his right side in all of its eye patch-y glory facing her. Bracing her heels against the countertop, Felicity boosted herself up to sit on its surface, planting her bottom right where he'd probably intended to set the bowl. Slade turned back to find her both directly in his path and barely half a foot away. Her hand shot out and latched onto his shirt collar, gently urging him closer.

 "I've decided I don't wait to wait until the end of the date for this. Deal with it." Using the hand on his collar for leverage and bracing the other against the counter for balance, Felicity leaned across the small gap between them, took a steadying breath, and brushed her lips against his. Slade's entire body went rigid, a sharp intake of breath drawing through his nose. Her neck twinged a bit as she kept up the gentle pressure, waiting for him to move.

 The wait wasn't long.

 As if from miles away, Felicity heard the--thankfully plastic--mixing bowl hit the floor. Slade nudged her knees apart with one side of his hips and stepped between them, flush against the counter, without ever breaking the kiss. One of his hands found hers at his collar while the other snaked around her back. He pulled back just enough to flash her a quick, happy smile before he kissed her again and the world disappeared. His teeth gave a gentle but insistent tug to her bottom lip, and before she knew it his tongue was sliding against her own. Her fist clenched in his shirt, thoroughly wrinkling the fabric. He tasted a bit like their dinner and a whole lot like something wild, dangerous, and exactly what you'd want on your side if you were in trouble.

 It was several, long moments before either of them came up for air. When the desperation for oxygen got to be too much, Slade pulled away and panted down at her. Felicity could feel the flush at her cheeks and the pounding of her heart. "Um... wow." She blinked up at him, one hand coming up to brush her swollen lips. "Like, seriously, wow. You know how they give that great speech about different kisses in The Princess Bride and talk about the one kiss being the one that left all others behind? That kiss was terrible compared to the one we just had." Still flustered, her brain made an attempt to lighten the mood before she could stop it. She held up one hand. "Come on, high five for the world's best first kiss."

 Slade burst into loud, rich laughter, but his palm met hers with a gentle smack. "You're too much, you know that?" Placing his hands on either side of her hips, he lifted her down from the counter, making sure she was steady on her feet before he let her go. He dropped a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. "Let's get back to making those brownies."

 When asked for details the next day, Felicity would be completely incapable of explaining anything that happened during the process of stirring brownie mix, preheating the oven, and getting the chocolatey goodness into a pan. Where the rest of the evening had been lighthearted and comfortable, there was a tension in the air in the wake of the kiss. She found her eyes drawn to Slade's mouth whenever they weren't focused elsewhere, mentally searching for any reason she could think of to get those lips back on hers. Finally, a snippet of conversation from far earlier in the evening flitted up from the back of her mind. She leaned her hip against the sink, and while Slade bent to put the brownies in the oven she put her plan into motion.

 "You know, even though you said your sexuality includes me, don't think that means I didn't notice that you didn't correct me as to whether you were into more than girls. Does that mean it won't necessarily be gross if I have some very interesting fantasies about what happened on that island?"

 The grin Slade gave her when he stood back up could be described as nothing less than wolfish, and Felicity felt the tingle of it right down to her toes. He tossed the oven mitt he'd been wearing on the counter, reaching out to tug her closer to him with one hand on her hip. His other hand threaded its way into her hair, and her breath caught as he leaned down until his lips were inches from her own. "I was on that island a long time," he teased just before he pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was slow and sweet, but the controlled heat behind it set them both to trembling. Finally, Slade pulled back, his eye half-lidded as it traveled over her face. "If this wasn't our first date I might be tempted to tell you some tales of my sordid history."

  _Oh, hell no,_ Felicity's brain screeched. Sure, she could recognize that he was teasing her, but there was no way she was going to sit back and let him believe that she was just going to turn into putty. Well, she might turn into putty, but she wasn't about to go that route unless she did the exact same thing to him. It was her turn for a wolfish grin as she wound her arms about his neck, pointedly ignoring the rush of nerves as he quirked one eyebrow at her over his eyepatch. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and looked up at him through her eyelashes, a move she knew was guaranteed to get a reaction. The quickening of his breath didn't disappoint.

 "I'm pretty sure if we combine the awkward-movie-and-drinks night with two breakfasts, the Chinese delivery you paid for, and two attempts at watching The Avengers we can say we've got at least two dates under our belts besides this one," she reasoned. "So, we can probably bypass all the rules about things we're not supposed to do on a first date." She could feel Slade's heart begin to beat out a fast, irregular rhythm as she pressed herself fully against him, standing on her tiptoes until her lips just brushed his ear. "I should probably tell you that this is the part where you kiss me and we end up making out on the couch like teenagers for a few hours before I kick you out because some things I still won't do on date three and if I don't kick you out I'll end up breaking my own rule." Her teeth closed briefly on his earlobe in a playful nip. "Get to it, super-spy."

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

The brownies burned.

 Neither of them cared.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Sara and Oliver were sitting on a rooftop across the street from Felicity's apartment in full vigilante gear as soon as the sun had completely set. They weren't necessarily spying. The were just making sure that Slade was being completely honest about his motives. Of course, that hadn't stopped them from telling Diggle and Roy that they were going out for a normal couple date night. Both of them figured that the stakeout could technically count, anyway. Sitting on rooftops through the night was about as normal as the two of them were likely to get.

 It was nearly one in the morning when both of their ears pricked up to the sound of Felicity's front door opening. They raised identical pairs of binoculars in tandem, focusing the lenses on the small porch across the way. A very flushed Felicity was guiding Slade halfheartedly through the door. Her hair was a mess, and even Slade looked decidedly rumpled. The pair exchanged a series of goodnight kisses, both seemingly reluctant to actually say goodbye. Finally, Felicity tore herself away and backed into her apartment, quipping something that looked suspiciously like 'See you tomorrow' before she eased the door shut.

 As Slade walked slowly toward his car, both vigilantes were pleasantly surprised that he didn't seem to notice them at all. They both also noted with internal sighs of relief that he couldn't seem to stop smiling.


	12. I Can Promise You That I Will

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I want all of you to know that I have had the last two paragraphs of this story written since I wrote Part Four. It has been killing me trying to finally get to them, but beyond the correction of a spelling error, those paragraphs are completely unchanged from what I wrote all that time ago. Apologies for taking so long to get the final chapter done, but I honestly couldn't let myself post it until I was convinced it was perfect.

** Part Twelve: I Can Promise You That I Will **

 

Felicity, Oliver, and Diggle made their way through Verdant toward the access hatch to what the blonde had jokingly dubbed the "Arrowcave". Her boys hadn't made any direct comments on her evening with Slade, but Oliver kept shooting her knowing half smiles that set her cheeks ablaze. Not, of course, that it was taking a whole lot to make her blush. Her traitorous brain kept flashing up scenes from her date at the most inopportune moments, making her smile and giggle and turn bright red all on her own.

 "Well," Diggle began when they paused to let Oliver key in the entry code. "We made it most of the day, so now I've got to ask." As the door swung open he turned to Felicity with a smirk. "How was your date with Hannibal last night?"

 Even though she knew it was a joke, Felicity frowned. "Not an okay comparison, Dig," she insisted. To his credit, Diggle looked a little sorry for it. "He's made mistakes and he knows it, but cannibalism definitely isn't on the list." She paused once more, filled with a sudden panic, before whirling around on Oliver at the top of the stairs. "Is it? I mean, I couldn't find any evidence of cannibalism in my searches, but it's not exactly a piece of getting to know you conversation and oh god he made chicken and they say people are white meat and Oliver _how_ could you let me date a cannibal!?"

 Grasping her shoulders, Oliver gave her a thorough but gentle shake, a very familiar exasperation on his face. "Glossing right over the part where he cooked because I can't imagine Slade cooking anything that isn't wild boar over open flame--No, he's not a cannibal, Felicity." Though his words and tone were serious, the amusement behind them was obvious. "I promise." Nudging her with his hip, he started down the stairs, Diggle right behind him. Breathing a sigh of relief and more than a little embarrassed that she'd gotten so quickly bent out of shape, Felicity followed. Just a few steps from the bottom, she ran straight into Diggle's back. Stepping back up a stair, she stood on her tip toes and craned her neck to see what they were staring at. Her mouth fell open in surprise.

 On the mats in front of her computers, Slade stood across from Roy with a pair of training pads on his hands. They were both coated in a light sheen of sweat and barefoot. With every few punches or kicks they paused so Slade could adjust Roy's position or give a few pointers, murmuring just softly enough that she couldn't make out the words from so far away. Roy had been nothing but brutal in training since his break up with Thea, but with Slade he actually seemed to be listening like a reasonable person rather than falling into his anger.

 Bending down, Felicity slipped her feet out of her shoes and took them in hand before shouldering her way between Oliver and Dig. She made her way across the floor as quietly as she could, straining her ears to try and catch the conversation. Halfway across the room, words started to make sense.

 "The strength is an effective bonus," Slade was telling Roy while they slipped back into ready positions, "but unless you're sure you can control it you will always run the risk of destroying everything in your path. Again." Several feet behind her desk, Felicity paused, watching as Roy dealt a series of vicious punches to the pads. Vicious, but somehow different. "Good. When I first got off that damned island, I still wasn't used to the Mirakuru. I couldn't even try to open a door without ripping the handle off."

 The difference struck her like a punch in the gut. Roy was _pulling his punches._ Slade was probably the only person on the planet that Roy could hit with his full strength and not seriously hurt, and he was teaching him how to take it easy. How to control the strength in a fight so it would be easier to control outside of one. Slade's eyes flickered briefly toward her, and she knew she was caught, but as she rolled her chair out and plopped down the lesson continued as if she wasn't there at all.

 "You can break every door you come to, punch your way through concrete walls, and beat men to death until you're blue in the face, kid," he lectured on, nodding while Roy continued to throw slightly muted punches. "I know the rage is telling you to do just that, and it's so easy to give in. Conquering the urge to use the strength like this is the easy part compared to the rest. If you don't start on it now, it'll seep into every part of your mind until you're just like me, sitting on a pretty girl's floor in the middle of the night half a decade later with the realization that you don't even know yourself anymore." Tears sprang into Felicity's eyes. Was this guy actually real? Standing there baring the soul he'd only just dug back out from the depths of his grief to help a young man cope? A punch slipped off one of the pads and caught Slade in the shoulder. He didn't flinch. "That's enough."

 "I can go for longer," Roy insisted, throwing another punch into the same pad he'd just missed.

 Quick as lightning, Slade tossed the pads down, stepped forward, looped an arm around Roy's torso, and tossed the younger man to the ground. Keeping Roy down with one hand against his chest, Slade gave him a cocky grin. "I don't doubt it, but if you keep going you might forget the lesson." He offered his hand and pulled Roy to his feet. "We'll keep going later. Might even show you a few tricks Queen never got to learn." With a muted smile, Roy nodded and made his way off to the showers. Slade watched him go, a contemplative expression on his face.

 "This is a bit unexpected." Though Slade didn't so much as flinch when Oliver spoke, Felicity through her hands in the air and spun around in her chair, staring wide-eyed at the vigilante barely three feet behind her. She'd never heard him approach. She narrowed her eyes at him in an attempt to convey her annoyance, but his attention was focused on Slade. Giving up, she spun back around just in time for Slade's reply.

 "I may not have injected him, but it's my fault the kid got juiced," Slade said simply, turning a flat gaze on Oliver as soon as Roy had disappeared from view. "The least I can do is help him deal with it." He bent to snatch a towel off the floor, sauntering forward while he scrubbed it over the sweat cooling on his face and neck. "Besides, you were training him all wrong. He'll get himself killed if he listens to you so much."

 "Guess we're lucky he doesn't listen to Oliver, then," Felicity mused. Somewhere behind her, Diggle gave an answering snort. There and gone in an instant, the corner of Slade's mouth twitched in amusement. Irritation was radiating off Oliver in waves, but Felicity couldn't help the giddiness flowing through her. It was Slade's first time (she hoped? There was always the possibility he'd snuck in before.) in the Arrowcave and he was already joining in on the noble sport of Oliver Baiting.

 Before Oliver could huff any louder, Slade sobered the mood. "The kid's not the only reason I'm here," he admitted. "And before you ask, Felicity is only one of the other reasons." He took a deep breath, looking anywhere but at one of them. "I may be ready to give up on my vendetta, but it's not as easy as me quitting." His eye found Oliver's face once again, his expression level. "I've spent years building the plan and the empire necessary to exact my vengeance. I need your help to dismantle it."

 The thump of Felicity's head against her desk followed by a muttered "this is so going to suck" marked the beginning of a very long Team Arrow meeting.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

 

"I'd invite you in for coffee," Felicity insisted as Slade walked her up the steps to her front door, "real coffee, that is, because that totally wasn't a euphemism and not that I think you'd think it was a euphemism but it's kinda two in the morning and what is English? I need to go to bed." Shaking her head, she pressed her fingertips to her temples, willing the I-stared-at-computers-too-long headache to dissipate.

 With a chuckle, Slade wrapped her in a gentle hug, placing a kiss against the top of her head. "I know. I'm sorry about that." They'd spent the better part of the night with Slade explaining the entirely too intricate intricacies of his plot for making Oliver suffer. Then, the two of them had spent the next couple of hours while Oliver and the others were on patrol setting up the necessary traces on all of the accounts and computer systems Slade had been using. If he didn't smell so good and his arms didn't feel so great wrapped around her and she didn't have that awesome memory of tight jeans from the night before Felicity would have been thoroughly disgusted with him for his much-too-genius evil genius plans that were now on the Team Arrow "to-destroy" list.

 "You're going to have to let go or I might fall asleep on you right here," she mumbled, nuzzling her face into Slade's chest, and further contradicting her words by snaking her own arms around his back. Laughter rumbled through his body.

 "Go right ahead. I'll stand here all night and let you sleep if I must."

 Felicity pulled back and gave him a light punch in the side. "You're supposed to say you'd dig out my keys and carry me inside," she grumbled. Almost as soon as she said the words a wicked grin crossed Slade's mouth.

 "Don't think I'd have to dig out the keys," he teased, giving her a very quick peck on the lips. One of his hands slipped from her waist into her line of sight, and she blinked owlishly at the sight of her keys hanging from his fingers. "It's much easier to pickpocket them from your purse."

 In an instant she found herself tossed over his shoulder, fighting between giggling and squealing aloud while he held her in place with one arm and worked the keys into the lock with the other. She settled on the laughter as he stepped inside and proceeded to follow her standard routine for coming through the door. First, he tossed the keys in the decorative bowl on the table just inside the door. Then, he reached behind himself to lift her purse from her shoulder and deposit it beside the bowl. Felicity couldn't help but giggle louder as he not only stripped off her shoes, but took the time to tickle the soles of her feet. Finally, he set her down on the first step of her staircase, and she came face to face with the most carefree smile she'd ever seen on him, the step adding just enough to her height to make them level with one another.

 "Now," Slade began stepping as close as he could and taking her face between his hands. His eyes drifted down to her lips. "I'm going to give you a proper kiss goodnight and make sure your flat is secure so I know you'll sleep safely." He leaned forward to do just as he said, but Felicity darted her hand to his lips before he could close the distance.

 "Worried for my safety and not even trying to weasel your way into my bed?" she quipped, one eyebrow raised over her glasses. "Are you even a real guy? Television and movies have always told me that guys who do that don't actually exist, you know."

 Slade chuckled, sliding one arm back around her waist. "Perhaps television and movies prefer not to showcase a man who wants to be careful with something he realizes could be very precious in his life."

 Felicity's heart began to thunder in her chest even as she outwardly rolled her eyes at him. "What, are you trying to say you love me, Mr. Aussie-Grumpy-Butt?"

 "No," Slade answered, pulling her more tightly against him. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "But I am saying that if you stick around long enough, I can promise you that I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all SO MUCH for following me and this story on the (admittedly not long) journey. This is actually the first multi-chapter fic I have ever finished in the decade plus that I've been writing fanfic. It means the world to me to have done it at all, even if this fic is completely un-betaed and is pretty full of errors that I might get around to fixing up someday. Maybe. >.>
> 
> For each and every one of you that reviewed: I wish I could bake you each a batch of every fantastic sweet I know how to cook (which is a lot, I'm kinda awesome in the kitchen). I don't think I could have done this at all without your constant support. I know I haven't been particularly talkative as I've gone through with the updates, but when I struggled with a bit of the story I would always go back and read your wonderful comments. Seriously, I love you all.
> 
> So, there is a sequel already in the planning process. I don't know when I'll get started as I might need a little break (pssssh, yeah right) from this universe. Keep your eyes open, and thank you all again. :)


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